


Lighter than a Feather

by ancientroots



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29333478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientroots/pseuds/ancientroots
Summary: At eighteen years old, Ash Ketchum has achieved something most ten-year-old kids, just starting out, only dream of. He is the winner of a Pokémon League. Afterwards, he finds himself continuing on as he was, catching, training, befriending, and learning with Pokémon and humans alike as he works towards his own dream, which is to become a Pokémon Master. He's doing what he loves, and he's happy.Then, four years after their last meeting, Gary Oak goes missing. In the chaos that ensues, Ash is forced to question everything that he had thought he knew.
Relationships: Ookido Shigeru | Gary Oak/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

On his last day, Gary woke on a bare mattress with his windbreaker covering him. 

He didn’t remember falling asleep. Only tossing and turning in the dark, Umbreon snoring softly beside him. Exhaustion floated like a cloud over his head, but his every muscle was tense with a nervous energy. He should check everything one last time. 

The cottage in which he’d spent the last four years looked alien, now. Stripped bare like his mattress, its contents packed into boxes and picked up for shipping the night before, or into less pristine boxes to be taken away by the garbage trucks day after next. The day after that, the cleaning company he’d contracted would pick up the keys from Professor Rowan’s lab, and wash, and vacuum, and scrub away the rest of it. 

When the new assistant arrived, the place would be only a little older and wearier than it’d been the first time Gary stepped over its threshold. 

You could’ve stayed, he thought. You could’ve, but you chose not to. 

Sleek, warm fur brushed his legs. Umbreon pushed her head into his hand. 

“All right, girl. Let’s eat.”

In the little garden outside, Sinnoh’s long winter was already well underway. The only leaved trees were evergreen ones; the grass and the bushes and the mailbox drowsed away under a thick layer of snow. Gary inhaled frost and exhaled mist. 

Walking down the little path with his backpack slung over one shoulder and Blastoise and Umbreon’s Pokéballs in a belt pouch, he could have been stepping out the gate to do another day’s work. Or starting on his Pokèmon journey. 

How was he supposed to feel about that?

He locked the gate behind him, dropped the key in the mail slot, and stepped back. 

“Welp,” he said. “Smell ya later.”

In the grey quiet of dawn, the only human noise was the crunch of his boots in the snow. 

“Which was your favourite?” Go had once asked him. 

They’d been stretched out on their bunk beds, heads stuck out over the edge so that they were talking face to face. Ash had a crick in his neck from the uncomfortable position, but that was nothing compared to the aches and pains of a day chasing Riolu, nor to the fun of talking like this, like children at sleepaway camp. 

“My favourite,” he echoed. 

“There’s always a favourite,” said Go. Pointing with eerie accuracy right through the wooden bottom of Ash’s bunk to where Pikachu slept, curled around Ash’s unused pillow. “The region with the most fascinating Pokémon, the best legendaries, the strongest Trainers. There’s got to be one for you, too.”

Ash thought about it. 

“Well, Sinnoh was cold. Unova was colder.”

“Alola then? It’s got the best memories, I suppose.”

“What,” laughed Ash. “Because I won? That is the best memory, I guess. One of the best. I don’t know, though. I mean, Hoenn was when I first started doing Contests. And there was this cool knight thing they did in Kalos. And Johto was where I finally beat Gary.”

“Contests? Never mind that, who’s Gary?”

“Gary Oak, my – ”

Gary’s face came to mind. As it had been in the moment after the dust cleared, and before Ash’s victory fully hit either of them. As it was in the shadow of the setting sun, both halves of their Pokéball cool and hard in Ash’s hand. As it was the last time they’d seen each other, with Lake Valour stretching out from where they stood into the horizon, wide as the sea.

“An old friend of mine,” he corrected. Of all the things he could have said, it sounded the least like a lie. 

Go wasn’t listening, anyway. “Oak as in Professor Oak? The professor has a grandson? Wait, I do remember something like that. Koharu mentioned it, something like a car crash and…Sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about this, right?”

“It’s fine,” said Ash. “They weren’t my parents. But, no, it was a collision between two flying Pokémon, and yeah, when Gary was six, he came to Pallet Town to live with Professor Oak, and that’s when we met.”

He remembered Gary then, too. Already taller and bigger than Ash, face damp and eyes swollen, clinging so hard to his sister’s hand that the blood had gone from his fingers. 

“Were you crying?” Not the most sensitive thing Ash could have said. 

Gary had been little better. “No,” he’d snapped. “Stupid.” And stuck out his tongue. 

In the moonlight, Go’s eyes looked almost silver, and when he grinned, his teeth gleamed silver too. Ash realised that the grin was in answer to his own. 

“What’s so funny?”

Ash shook his head. “Can’t tell you.”

“Oh yeah? Then, can you tell me what’s he doing now? Professor Oak’s grandson.”

“He’s in Sinnoh, researching Pokémon.”

Go rolled over, planting his face into his pillow. His words came out muffled. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

Ash rolled over too, onto his back. His eyes had adjusted enough now to make out the lines of the wooden planks, and the scorch marks that Pikachu’s latest nightmare had produced. Mr Mime was going to be so unhappy the next time he dropped by to check up on them. Maybe he should try scrubbing it out again. 

While he was considering this, the thought stole into his mind that actually, he didn’t know. Four years ago, sure, Gary had been in Sinnoh, travelling between Lake Valour and Mount Coronet with Professor Rowan. But four years was a long time. 

Had he really not so much as heard mention of Gary in the last four years?

Understandable, he supposed. He hadn’t spent much time with his mother or the Professor, even after Alola. There had been too much to do in the surrounding forest with Pikachu and Rotom, and at the lab, catching up with all the Pokémon he’d left behind. 

He turned onto his side again. And then onto his back. And then onto his other side. But the sleepy comfort of the last few hours was gone. 

When he closed his eyes, it wasn’t Gary he saw on the back of his eyelids anymore. It was himself. Three years old and sitting on the floor of the kitchen in the ruins of his temper tantrum, shouting the same thing over and over again at his poor, stricken mother. 

“Papa! I want Papa!”

It was fine, he thought now. It would all be fine. Tomorrow, he’d ask Professor Oak for Gary’s e-mail address, and send him a note. They could arrange to video-call, maybe even meet up in person. It was almost November, after all, and surely Gary wouldn’t mind spending his birthday at home. 

Turning over again, he whispered, “Hey, Go. How about I introduce you guys? The next time we’re in Pallet, we can all go do something together.”

Below him, Go let out a loud snore. 

Tomorrow, Ash repeated to himself. And at last, allowed sleep to come. 

When tomorrow dawned and he didn’t call Professor Oak, didn’t even remember to drop him a message on his brand new phone, he couldn’t entirely be blamed. All the food in Sakuragi Park had disappeared without warning, and the Pokémon were irate. He and Go had a culprit to catch. 

Anyway, most things that seem so frightening in the dark are, upon waking, but half-forgotten dreams. 

And so it was that about two weeks later, Ash tore himself away from Go, cheeks still aching from laughing, to answer his phone.

“Yeah, Mum?” he asked. “What is it?”

Mum was sitting at their kitchen table. He could see the kitchen cupboards behind her, the sink, the dishes in the rack, still wet. Her hands were out of sight, but somehow he knew she was wringing them. It was the look on her face. The smile that was trying to be so many things that it wobbled, and the careful eyes. 

“Hello, darling. You’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

Behind him, it was quiet. Go had stopped playing with Riolo and Gengar. 

“Well,” said Mum. “Well, sweetheart, listen. Before I tell you what I’m going to tell you, I want you to know that there’s nothing to be worried about. The professor and I, and Daisy, you remember Daisy, we are all working on it and we have it under control. It’s just that it’s been some time now, it’s been quite a while, and it’s time that you knew.”

Pikachu was scratching at Ash’s shoulder. Maybe he was saying something, but Ash couldn’t hear. His blood was thudding too hard in his ears. “Know what?”

Mum took a deep breath. Let it out. Then said, “Gary was supposed to have reached home a week ago. The professor and Daisy thought he might have been taking the long route, you know, sightseeing a little before he boarded the ferry back from Sinnoh, but they haven’t been able to contact him, and no one knows where he is. 

“The police don’t think we should be too worried; he’s almost eighteen, and he’s travelled around so much on his own. But he isn’t eighteen just yet, and it’s the law, so under the law, they’ll be opening an investigation. Part of that investigation is contacting everyone Gary knew. Now, sweetheart. I know it’s been a while since you’ve seen each other, but that does include you. So, just in case the police give you a call, you need to be ready. Okay?”

Ash didn’t really understand. Mum was saying things, and they seemed to be logical, at least there seemed to be a logical progression to them, but it was too surreal. Mum was saying things, but surely she didn’t mean him. Him. Her. Them. Gary. 

“I don’t,” he started. Then shook his head “Mum, what are you saying?”

She pressed her trembling lips together. “Oh, Ash. Gary might be missing.”

Shoving his phone into his pocket, Ash ran to the window and yanked the handle down. 

“Pika-pika?”

“Ash, hey, what’s wrong?”

“Hold on tight, buddy, yeah?” Opening the window with one hand, he reached into his other pocket and took out a Pokéball, pressed the button so that it expanded in his palm. Throwing it into the cool autumn air, he called, “Dragonite!”

Dragonite swooped into the air, letting out a happy cry even as Ash lunged forward to catch the ball before it hit the ground. He climbed up onto the windowsill. 

“Dude,” said Go, extra loud. Because, Ash registered somewhere in his imploding brain, Ash was ignoring him. “Where are you going?”

“Sorry, there’s something I have to do. Dragonite, come down here.”

Tucking its wings in, Dragonite glided to a stop just under the window. Pikachu’s claws dug into Ash’s shoulder. He jumped, arms going around Dragonite’s thick neck and knees digging into its flanks. 

“Pallet, buddy, you remember where it is?”

With a squeal, Dragonite beat its wings, rising higher into the air. Glancing into the room, Ash saw Go, Gengar, and Riolu brace against the wind blowing through the open window. 

“Sorry,” shouted Ash again. “Tell Professor Cerise for me, will ya!”

“Tell him what?”

But Dragonite was soaring up then, up above the spire of Cerise Lab’s central tower, and her wings were opening to its full span, and Ash was digging his bare feet in enough that he wouldn’t fall when the Pokémon took off. 

At close to noon and in the direct path of the climbing sun, the damp chill of morning was almost gone, replaced by spells of warmth interspersed with gusts of a cool, northerly breeze.

On any other day, at a touch from Ash, Dragonite would have set herself to glide over the Cerulean skyscrapers, their metallic sheen going from soft early in the day to harsh and glittering in the full glare of the sun; the grey-blue waters lumbering towards the bay to go splat on the white beaches; and the tall evergreens that together formed the canopy of Viridian Forest, conspiring to keep everything else hidden underneath. 

Sometimes Go would be with him on Dragonite’s back, and they would be talking and laughing and pointing out the shoppers on the streets below, the surfers grappling with the waves on their colourful boards, and the odd Trainers battling it out in deserted alleyways, open plazas, grassy forest clearings, and on sunburnt sands.

Sometimes Ash would be alone, and he would remember riding Charizard just like this, Misty and Brock in front and behind him, laughing and shouting just like Go. 

And with Viridian Forest passing beneath slowly beating wings, it would be like no time had passed at all. 

Today, through gritted teeth, Ash said, “Full speed, Dragonite, go!”

The sun had reached its zenith when they touched down at river’s edge. Ash’s face and arms were red and stinging from the air whipping into them, and he was sweating under his clothes. Recalling Dragonite, he took a moment to regain his bearings. 

Beside him, the river ran strong and clear as it always had. On his left were the stone steps that wound up to the Oak lab, and on the opposite shore, the path he and Gary used to take to school in Viridian. Behind him was the wooden plank bridge that Gary would run across, flinging his goodbyes over his shoulder with a peace sign. 

Lab first, Ash decided. 

When he’d rounded the curve of the hill, coming up to where the steps were widest and the door to the lab visible, he saw that he wasn’t the only visitor. One of the Viridian Officers Jenny was, too, and another Officer Jenny whose hat symbol Ash didn’t recognise. 

“Hello there, young man,” said the second officer. “The professor is busy right now. You’ll have to come back.”

Ash turned to the Officer Jenny he recognised. “Ma’am, is this about Gary Oak?”

She peered at him. “Ash! Since when have you been back? Why, look at you, all grown up. And your Pikachu too. I see you haven’t evolved it.”

Now that she was smiling at him so brightly, he remembered that there were a million questions he wanted to ask her. How was her sister and the Squirtle Squad doing? It had been years since he last saw his Squirtle. Had she had a good time in Eterna City after the whole business at the museum, and what had she been doing a whole day’s ferry ride away from home in the first place? And why did looking at her make Ash feel like a ten year old again, crashing a stranger’s bike in a storm, with Spearow crashing after him and his first, and only Pokémon badly hurt? 

He had to calm down. He wasn’t that kid anymore. He had seen and heard worse things than this. He had been in worse scrapes. Nothing would get better because he was panicking about it. The thing to do was to be calm, figure out what happened, and then figure out how he could help. 

Taking a deep breath, letting it out, he managed a smile. “My mum told me what happened. I’m here to see if the professor and Daisy are okay.”

Officer Jenny looked at her partner. “He’s a friend of the family. Ash, this is Officer Jenny from Twinleaf Town in the Sinnoh region. Officer, this is Ash Ketchum. A local boy who I hear has gone on to win the Alola Pokémon League!”

Ash bobbed his head in greeting. “Nice to meet you. Twinleaf? That’s Dawn’s hometown.”

Not exactly polite, but the officer let it slide. “Nice to meet you too, Ash. I see you know our Dawn. And yes, in fact, we have her down as the second last person to have seen Gary. It seems – ” She glanced at her partner.

“Oh, it’s all right. The professor or his mum will fill him in if we don’t.”

“It seems that Gary was in Twinleaf for the annual festival. Dawn ran into him and they had a chat before he split.”

“Split? To go where?”

“The Pokémon Center. Nurse Joy says she saw him going up the stairs to the dorms, and we have him on CCTV entering his room. The strange thing is that he comes out again, very early in the morning, around two or three. Footage shows him leaving the centre, but no one actually saw him. The Chansey on night shift was round back, checking on an ill Piplup.”

Pikachu’s ears twitched at the mention of Piplup.

“I don't think it’s the Piplup we know,” Ash soothed. “Ma’am, what were Gary and Dawn talking about?”

Viridian Jenny smiled. “You ask good questions, kid. Maybe you should be a police officer. We always need good Trainers.”

Usually, the praise would have delighted Ash. Now he murmured his thanks, like Mum had taught him. 

“They talked about a lot of things. Dawn thinks that Gary was worried about the future. He never said anything directly, but that’s the feeling she got. He asked her a lot about what she’d been up to and what she was doing now, and what there was to see at the festival. The Xatu Circus seems to have piqued his interest. Do you know what that is? I didn’t think it was real, but Dawn says she’s been inside.”

“Me too,” said Ash. 

Twinleaf Jenny paused. “Well, imagine that.” She was blinking rapidly, the way adults sometimes did when they were pretty sure you couldn’t be telling the truth, but pretty sure you couldn’t have just imagined it, or lied about it, either. And were deciding to shelve it until they could think it through. 

“Dawn took us to where she remembered the Circus being, but it wasn’t there. Neither was Gary. Still, it’s the only lead we have. Honestly, without it, the mountains would still be our best bet. He can’t be hiding out in town, and if he’d walked out onto any route, someone would have seen him by now. Dozens of Trainers camp out in the open in that area. There isn’t a blind spot to be had, except the mountains.”

When she hesitated this time, Ash knew that it wasn’t because she didn’t know what to say. She did. She just didn’t know how to say it. 

“Anyway,” said the Viridian Jenny. “We’d be asking you sooner or later, so, have you seen Gary recently, Ash? Or heard from him?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t heard from him since – ” But that didn’t matter. 

The two officers were looking at him expectantly. When he didn’t continue, the Viridian Jenny’s eyes softened. “That’s all right,” she said. “We didn’t think you would have.”

Feeling as though she was seeing right into him, Ash fought the urge to pull his cap down, or excuse himself to go and see the professor, or to just blush to the roots of his hair, and said, “I can help, Officer. I’ve got a Dragonite, I recognise Gary’s Pokémon – ” At least, he didn’t think Gary would have given up his starter or Umbreon. “Are you looking in the mountains? My Pokémon are strong enough to take any wild ones I come across. Let me help.”

Twinleaf Jenny said, “Don’t get me wrong, kid. It’s good of you to offer. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“I won’t get in the way, I’ve helped out with things like this lots of times. Officer Jenny will tell you – ”

But Viridian Jenny’s mouth was twisted funny. 

And the look in her eyes. It hadn’t changed. 

Understanding curdled in Ash’s throat like bile. No, he wanted to say. No, I can take it, whatever it is. I’m eighteen. I’m an adult. I’ve been all over the world and seen so many things, I’m prepared. 

He had never seen a dead body. 

“Look,” said Viridian Jenny quickly. “There’s only a tiny possibility that anything bad’s happened. Honestly. We’re talking about a seasoned Pokémon Trainer and researcher. And the kid’s almost eighteen. Two weeks later, and we wouldn't even be worried yet. This is just procedure, you know, just to make sure that he’s okay. I’m almost certain that a few days from now, he’ll turn up at a Pokémon Centre and be dumbstruck by all this fuss being made about him.”

Once, Ash had stood on a ledge and watched concrete give way; breaking apart and tumbling Pikachu into the void of the sky. His heart had seized in his chest. His mind had gone blank. And yet even as time itself seemed to halt, he had seen play out before his eyes, from beginning to end, the worst possibility. 

When he did speak, it didn’t sound like his own voice. “I have to go see the professor.”

Twinleaf Jenny stepped out of the way. “Go ahead.”

There was no one in the entrance hall. He knocked on the various doors, but the locked ones were locked, and and the unlocked ones swung into empty rooms. 

Taking the stairs up to the research floor, he emerged onto the second storey of the lab to see that the enormous hanging lamp was dark. Sunlight spilled in from the windows, dusting the grey linoleum the colour of chalk. All the machines and computers stood quiet. Only the water container bubbled away. Ash remembered asking Professor Oak what the thing did before, when he was very young. The professor must have told him. But he still didn’t know. 

He walked to the windows. 

Behind the lab, the Oak Corral stretched out over stream and meadow and wood, all the way to the mountains, a misty blue in the distance. 

The only Pokémon in view was a Clefable. It looked vaguely familiar. 

Pikachu made the connection first. “Pika, pika!” 

As though he could hear Pikachu through the glass, the Clefable turned. He waved. 

Ash dashed back out into the hallway. The glass door detected his weight, sliding open so smoothly and rapidly that Ash didn’t need to break step, his sneakers hitting the soft, springy grass just where the Clefable was about to sink his clawed toes. 

“Ouch, sorry!”

“Clefable,” said the Pokémon feelingly.

Rubbing his forehead, Ash reached out his other hand and patted the Clefable. “When did Daisy evolve you!”

“Clefable, cle.”

“Where are they?”

Turning, the Clefable pointed across the stream. 

Ash took a few steps, then turned back. “Not coming?”

“Cle.” The glass door slid closed behind a set of dark pink wings. 

Ash resumed his headlong sprint, splashing through the shallow stream and over the meadow. As the wood to the southeast resolved into individual trees, he could make out his mother, the professor, and Daisy all sitting on a blanket in the shade. 

Seeing his approach, Mum shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun, then stood up. “Ash! Sweetheart, I told you there was no need.”

He came to a stop before them, breathing hard. 

“Hey there, Ash,” said Daisy. “Long time no see. Want some lemonade?”

“No,” he said. “Thanks. What – what are you doing out here?”

Daisy said, “We were feeling rather cooped up inside, and the weather’s so nice today, so why not? Clefable’s gone to get us some more ice. Sit and have something to drink, come on. You look parched.”

“Gary,” he said. 

“Ah,” said Professor Oak. “So Delia told you.”

Mum reached up to take his hand. And yank him down hard. “Yes, I did. I hope that’s all right, Professor.”

“Of course, of course. They would have contacted him, anyway.”

It wasn’t sudden or creepy or anything. But both Oaks were looking at him with an intensity that was almost fixation.

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “Sorry.”

Pushing a plate towards him, Daisy busied herself filling it with little scones and helpings of butter and strawberry jam. “Don’t be sorry. We didn’t think you would. Here, I made these myself. From a Galar recipe. Aunt Delia tells me you’ll be going there next.”

Her words were like the teeth of the opposite gear in a set, clicking into him. Unnaturally natural. He didn’t know how to click back. 

“You shouldn’t worry, Ash,” said Professor Oak. “Children much younger than you and Gary fall off the radar all the time, for longer than a week, even. Why, you must have done the same too many times to count. Ask your mother.”

Mum’s fingers were tight around his wrist. 

Professor Oak didn’t notice. “This is just procedure. Someone will call in soon and say that they’ve seen him, the police will make contact, and everything will be fine. You’ll see.” 

Ash’s heart was clenching. He was sitting but it wasn’t easier to breathe. And the worst possibility was etched in his mind like a scar. He burst to his feet. “Mum. I want to go check on my Tauros. Will you come?”

“Oh, the Tauros. Doing very well. Having an entire herd really is a boon to scientific investigation – ” The professor didn’t finish his sentence. Daisy didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t seem to notice Ash, either, even though she was still ladling jam onto his plate. 

Delia stood up too, smoothing down her skirt. “All right.”

The Tauros had a reconstructed habitat all to themselves, to the north of the wood. A high wooden fence separated them from the rest of the Corral, but Ash doubted that they felt hemmed in. The short, sweet grasses they roamed over were as vast as the Safari Park, and the barn they spent nights in was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. 

Tracy had explained this all to Ash, once. 

Had Tracy gone back to the Orange Islands? He didn't seem to be around the lab. 

“I thought you said there was nothing to be worried about, Mum.”

Pikachu leapt from Ash’s shoulder onto the fence, where she paced back and forth. 

The sound of hooves was like distant thunder, softer even than the wind that ruffled their jackets and teased strands of her hair loose from its ponytail. 

“There isn’t, darling. Like we’ve all been saying, this is just procedure.”

“But it’s not procedure. How often do I check in with you, Mum? You’ve never sicced the police on me.”

“Well, Ash Ketchum. How often do you tell me where you’re going?”

He stuttered, not quite sure what her point was, and then realising what it was, and going red. “S – sorry, I, uh – ”

As quickly as the spirit had entered her, it stole away. “That’s not the point, though, is it? The point is that Gary did tell the professor and Daisy that he would be home a week ago. Two days before he was due to board, he even called to remind them not to pick him up.”

“And that’s why everyone’s worried.”

Rather than look at him, she lifted a hand to stroke Pikachu’s tail. 

Pikachu stopped, purring a little, but it ears were down. 

“Is it that strange for Professor Oak and Daisy to be worried? Gary might be almost eighteen, but eighteen is barely more than a child. I’ve always thought it was silly that such young kids were allowed out on journeys. Ten is too young. When I think about what happened to you in Kalos, on that tower – ” 

“Mum, we’ve been over this, I was fine – ”

“You could have died,” she said. “And if we weren’t so lenient about children going off all alone and not getting in touch with their guardians for ages and ages, then maybe the professor and Daisy would have filed a report sooner. Maybe – ” 

But she didn’t finish the sentence. 

Pikachu, who could see her expression when Ash couldn’t, let out a mournful noise. 

In his mind’s eye, Ash kept seeing that dead body. Outside an Ursaring’s den, down a ravine, caught between a boulder and the surging current, tossed about like a branch not yet broken clean from the tree. 

He hadn’t spent much time in the mountains, but Dawn had taken him walking in them, picnicking in them, and he had seen enough of Sinnoh to be able to piece together a realistic situation. A realistic backdrop. 

He didn’t want to know.

He didn’t want to know. 

He didn’t need to know. He could step back. He could change the subject. He was eighteen now and an adult. But to the officers out front, to Professor Oak, to Daisy, to his mother, he was still too young to know everything. 

The distant rumble of thunder had dissolved into a rumbling cacophony of hooves. 

Mum’s mouth set. She turned around, a smile on her face. 

But for a split second there, it wasn’t her whom Ash saw. 

Ghost-white light sliced across Gary’s face. Then, he turned from the window to face Ash, and as his expression plunged into darkness, there was a noise like the sky cracking open.

“That’s a stupid question, Ash,” he’d said. “They both suck. Knowing and not knowing both suck. But you need to know. In the end.”

They had been seven at the time. Gary had been talking about his parents. Because Ash had been stupid enough to ask. 

They had been seven, and Gary hadn’t told him what it was like, to be this afraid. 

“Mum,” said Ash. “Please tell me.”

His mother looked at him. Just looked, for a long moment. Behind her, a cloud of dust had been kicked up, hiding the stampede. 

She said, “He didn’t bring anything. And it doesn’t look like someone forced him to leave. Gary could have just decided to take off, but his backpack and belt pouch were in lost and found. Nurse Joy thought some Trainer had just forgotten them and – ”

Her mouth was still moving, but the sound was snatched from them as the Tauros pounded through the cloud of their own arrival and one by one, caught sight of their Trainer. Their pace quickened and they whinnied sharp and high, taking the noise to a crescendo. Had they been less trained, they might have charged the fence. As it was, they crowded up right against it, happily stamping the ground in greeting. Mum’s lips shaped words Ash couldn’t hear, and then pressed together, and curved into a smile. 

“Hey,” he said, half-heartedly. “Heya, guys, you’re all looking great – ”

Something cool and metallic pressed into his hand.

Mum’s phone. She had used the Notes function to type him a message. 

The older children get, the less you know them. Eventually, you don’t know them at all. 

Ash had thought that he knew what it was. The worst possibility. 

He was beginning to see that for Mum, that had been an even worse one.


	2. Chapter 2

The last time Ash had taken the ferry to Sandgem, he had been fourteen years old. Four years later, nothing much had changed. The same battered, off-white hull; the same granny sitting on the forward deck, thermos and onigiri laid out around her. She didn’t seem to recognise Ash, but just like last time, she gave him onigiri and a sour plum sweet, and asked him what he was going to Sinnoh to do. 

Ash’s smile coagulated on his face. The plastic sweet wrapper crackled in his hand. 

He said, “Looking for a friend.”

Pikachu’s ears drooped. 

The granny looked between him and the Pokémon. “Well,” she said. “What’s this? Did you and your friend get into a fight?”

His throat was closing up. 

Reaching up, she took her hand between hers. They were warm, the skin wrinkled and leathery, and Ash imagined that it was the decades of her life he felt against his fingers. 

She said, “Now, now, don’t look so down. You’re young. Whatever you’ve fought about, you’ll make up again in a hurry. You’ll see.”

“Thank you,” he said. He couldn’t think what else to say.

Just then, Officer Jenny emerged from the bridge and called down to Ash, “Time to come back in! We want to be the first ones off this ship.”

Granny turned back to him at the same time he turned back to her. Her mouth had gone soft. Concerned. “Is everything all right, young man?”

Ash tipped his cap over his eyes. So that he wouldn’t have to look into hers. “Everything’s fine, ma’am. Thanks for the candy!”

Running back into the bridge, he slipped the sweets into his pocket, and didn’t think about them again until he was sitting on the back of Officer Jenny’s motorcycle, the engine and the wind loud in his ears, Pikachu’s furry body lodged between him and the officer’s sweating back, and his fingers gripping the seat. 

As Route 201 sped past them, blowing his stray thoughts from him like seeds from a dandelion clock, he wondered whether Dawn woud like sour plum. 

“Oh,” said Dawn, when he dropped the sweet into her hand. She glanced at Officer Jenny, who was watching them from her idling bike. “Thanks? I mean, thanks. You didn’t need to bring me anything.”

He stared at her. “Uh, uh, oh, that’s not what I brought you! You and your mum, I mean.” Pulling his backpack off, he fumbled through it. “I’ve got, uh.”

Piplup and Pikachu, who had been catching up at their feet, looked up at Ash in curiosity. Dawn laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, you didn’t need to bring anything! My mum and I are happy to have you. And I’m helping with the search too, so.” Her smile grew awkward. “So we can go and come back together.”

When Dawn had been ten, Ash had been fourteen. Maybe it was as a friend, Brock had said once, and Ash would always be a kid at heart. He certainly had never felt the age difference between them. Dawn had been one of his best friends. He hadn’t been wiser than her, more mature, any of those things. What they had learned, they had learned together. What they had experience, they had experienced together. 

But she was fourteen this year. And Ash was eighteen. And that gap he had never felt, it was there now. Maybe it was different once one of you was an adult, no matter how newly minted. Maybe Brock had just been wrong, and somewhere between leaving that friend behind in Unova and meeting Dawn again in Sinnoh, Ash had grown up. 

“Yeah,” he said, holding out the nicely wrapped box of Kanto Bananas. “Sounds great.”

Officer Jenny said, “Six o’clock sharp outside the Pokémon Centre. The fog will be thick over Lake Verity, so dress up warm. I’m talking to you, Ash.”

“But you said this was fine – ”

“I’ll find him something, officer, don’t worry.” Dawn’s hand closed around his wrist, tugging. “Come on. You won’t believe how much things have changed since you left. Since the Mesprit sightings were confirmed, we’ve gotten so many tourists, we don’t just have a Pokémon Centre now, you know, we’ve got a salon and – ”

“Wait,” said Officer Jenny. 

They turned back. 

In the glare of the setting sun, her dark blue uniform looked almost purple, and her kind face was shadowed. “I meant what I said. For the both of you. Whenever you want to stop, you can. No shame in it whatsoever.”

“You’ve only said that a million times, Officer,” said Dawn.

Shaking her head, she looked at Ash. 

“Understood,” he said. And took a breath. “But I won’t stop.”

She kicked her bike stand up. Touched a gloved hand to her cap, and sped back through the wild grass and onto Route 201. 

Watching her go, Ash asked, “Why does your Officer Jenny live in Sandgem?”

Dawn huffed, pulling at his hand so that he followed her down towards the houses, the waters of the sole pond glittering in the distance. “You’ll see. One day, I’ll be so famous that Twinleaf will have its own Pokémon Contest, and then we’ll need two Officers Jenny, and we won’t be sharing a single one of them with Sandgem.”

They talked like this all the way to Dawn’s house, where the chatter continued on Dawn’s side all throughout Ash’s greeting her mum, and being shown to the guest room, and helping to prepare dinner, and eating dinner, and cleaning up after, and excusing themselves to go up to Dawn’s room, where she required an uncharacteristic amount of persuasion before she’d get up and retrieve her ribbons and cups from a glass cabinet, and tell him the stories behind each one. 

“When May and I split up and I came back here,” she was saying. Hours later. The house quiet. The TV downstairs having gone silent, and her mum’s bedroom door clicked shut aeons ago. Piplup and Pikachu dozing on a large Wigglytuff-shaped beanbag. “I wasn’t sure what to do next. I was thinking maybe Unova, that’s where May was saying she’d go, but then I was thinking also Kalos.”

For no reason he could discern, the name tripped off her tongue, and landed somewhere in between them, dripping with sudden gravity. 

“Did,” she said. “Did Officer Jenny tell you? I met Gary. I was the second-last person to see him before he – and I was the last person he actually talked to.”

She’d sat up straighter. Unconsciously, he mimicked her. “Yeah.”

“Don’t you want to know what he said?”

He didn’t bring anything, Mum had said, the sound leached from her voice by the oncoming stampede. The sun shining in her eyes, making them as distant as the shadow of a Dragonite might have been, sailing over the grass. 

At last, Ash said, “I’ve already heard the gist from Officer Jenny.”

“Don’t you want to know exactly what he said, though?”

Mum, and Daisy, and Professor Oak must have been told exactly what Gary had said. Ash set his jaw. “My knowing won’t change anything.”

It wasn’t any more of an answer than the first one he’d given. But she dropped her gaze. Pinched at the lace border of one of her Johto ribbons. “Officer Jenny wouldn’t tell me, but I’m fourteen. I’m not stupid. And I listen. It was three in the morning. He was pretty much empty-handed. Maybe someone took him. Maybe he just left. Either way, he could be dead.”

The house was so quiet that Ash could hear the threads of carpet under his palms like a noise. And sense the metal of his drumming blood like a taste. All the tip-toeing, he thought. All the euphemisms, the hesitations, the outright silences. 

“He said that he was going to Kalos.” Her ribbon twisted in her fingers, and Ash itched to rescue it. “Going to Kalos, maybe, and I said, cool, I’m going there too, let’s go together! But he had to go home first and see his family, and maybe he wouldn’t be going, he didn’t know. He hadn’t decided. And he looked so down, you know? So depressed, and I asked him what was wrong, and he said nothing, really. He just didn’t know, and it was like the older he got, the less he knew. And I should have said something then. I don’t know, something comforting or meaningful, but I didn’t know what to say. And then he’d changed the topic, and I didn’t know how to get back to it.”

As she spoke, her ribbon twisted faster and faster, disappearing and reappearing in between her fingers like the crimson scales of that red Gyarados the Kanto champion, Lance had caught, way back when. 

“But he was just depressed, you know? Everyone gets depressed. May used to be like that before Contests, and sometimes we’d talk and she’d tell me she wasn’t sure this was what she should be doing for the rest of her life, and I didn’t really get why she was thinking about the rest of her life right now, but Gary’s a bit like May, I think. They think too much, that's all.”

A dozen questions twisted in the folds of her ribbon, all begging for the same kind of answer. But Ash didn’t know whether he could give it. He didn’t know whether he could lie to her outright, even though he was eighteen now, and she was not. 

So he asked his own question. “Why was he going to Kalos?”

The ribbon went limp in her hands. She brought to her knees and buried her face in them. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. I don’t know.”

Ash’s eyes widened. He touched her shoulder. “Dawn, it’s not your fault.”

“What isn’t?”

“You didn’t make Gary leave the Pokémon Centre that night. Whatever happened after, you’re not responsible.” 

She raised her head, stared at him with such intensity that it came out like anger. “Whatever happened after. You mean, like maybe he was depressed, and he went and killed himself?”

It was the first time that someone had said it out loud, to him. 

“No,” said Ash. “He wouldn’t. Officer Jenny said that he called home just days before, that he was coming home, people don’t do that when they – they – and – ” The important thing struck him. The most important thing. “Gary isn’t like that. When he loses, he picks himself up, he finds a way, he doesn’t give up – ”

Blastoise on the ground, the cheering that crashed over him like a wave, the umpire shouting, the winner is Ash Ketchum – and Gary on the other side of the arena, mouth edging into that tch that Ash didn’t have to hear to recognise, before he turned away. 

Their last battle, before Gary shelved his Trainer’s ID for good. 

“I told him about the Circus,” said Dawn. “I told him, Ash.”

He was still blinking the dust of the arena from his eyes. He was still fumbling for meaning, still confused, and maybe that was why Dawn’s statement seemed to come out of left field.

“Do – do you think he was looking for the Circus?” Understanding dawned. “Dawn, do you think that he – and got lost – ”

“I don’t know.”

“What other possibility is there?”

Why had the adults all been so concerned, so certain that there was another explanation. Ash’s chest eased. He hadn’t known how tight it had been, how heavy, until it wasn’t so much anymore. It still hurt to breathe, but his brain wasn’t in overdrive, he wasn’t hunting around in the fog anymore. 

Gary had gone on an adventure, gone to check something out the way any Trainer, any researcher might have done. That was all. 

“You don’t understand,” said Dawn. “You don’t know what I said. You don’t know – ”

“What could you have said? All we did in the Circus was re-enact the moments when we became friends with our Pokémon. Pikachu and I, fighting off those Spearow together. Piplup rescuing you from those Ariados, instead of the other way round. Maybe Gary just wanted a chance to experience that for himself.”

Dawn’s face was still. And then, slowly, slowly, she smiled. “It was so simple for you. I wish – I wish that you were the one who had met him here. Who told him about it. Then, maybe it would have been an adventure. Everything used to be an adventure, with you.”

On the cushion, Piplup had sat up and was blinking at them. “Pip,” he said, jumping down and skittering over to Dawn. Whose eyes were filling with tears. 

“That day in the Circus, Ash, I used to think it was the defining moment of my life. It was when I understood who I was. What I was. Who I was meant to be. It was so stupid. I’m a teenager. What do I know? But, do you know what he said?”

Pikachu, still asleep, turned on its back and let out a satisfied snore. 

“He looked so sad, Ash. And he said, what I wouldn’t have given for a moment like that, back when it might have mattered.”

Ash went to sleep in the guest room. Or pretended to. What he really did was climb out the window and down a tree, Pikachu cradling electricity in her cheek pouches to give him some light. The cold was far bitterer than he was used to, and far drier. When there was a breeze, it sliced through his clothes and into his blood. When there wasn’t, the very air scraped against his skin like blocks of dry ice. 

He should probably have waited for the clothing Dawn had promised him. 

As it was, he was shivering violently by the time he reached the Pokémon Centre. The doors slid open to admit him into a yellow-tiled lobby. The rows of leather seats were empty, and newer than he was used to. A single Wigglytuff stood behind the counter. Seeing Ash, it jumped, then reached down for something, a blanket, scolding Ash all the while.

“Thanks,” he said. Pulling the blanket over his shoulders and arranging it so that it covered Pikachu, he tied it in place around his neck. “Can I go up to the dorms?”

The Wigglytuff ducked down again.

“No, I’m not staying the night. I just want to have a look around.”

The Pokémon tapped the notice that had been taped onto the front of the guest book.

Boarders and visitors alike must sign in and sign out using legitimate IDs before being allowed upstairs.

“This is new.” And unncessary. No one had taken Gary. He’d just – gone. 

“Wiggly,” it said, sounding mournful. 

Ash dredged up a smile. “Okay, sure. Can you tell me something though? Which room did Gary Oak stay in?”

The Pokémon Centre was a relatively small one. There were only four dormitory rooms, divided by gender. After some negotiation between the Pokémon, Wigglytuff had flipped back in the guest book to where Gary had signed in, and his room assignation was written down next to his name. 201. 

He’d expected the room to be cordoned off, or something. For investigation purposes.

But he guessed that there had been no point. Gary had been gone for a week. In that time, whatever traces he’d left would have disappeared. Gary’s backpack and belt pouch were already in police custody. 

There had been no real point to Ash visiting. 

And yet, here he was. 

The door swung open into a small room. An arched window in the opposite wall dominated the space, curtains drawn over it so that only a sliver of moonlight shone through, sharpening to a point at Ash’s feet. Under the window was a writing desk, and on either side of that were a set of bunk beds. Only the bottom right bunk was occupied. 

Quietly, Ash made his way to the desk. For lack of anything better to do, he opened the drawers. Centre-issue notepaper and pens, free envelopes and stamps, and a Sinnoh guidebook so old that the covers bent easily in Ash’s hands, the pages tissue-soft. Next, he picked up the stack of notepaper. All blank. Of course they were. Nurse Joy or a cleaner in her employ would have thrown out anything used. 

Just as he was about to put the stack down too, something caught his attention. He heaved open one curtain, letting the moonlight wash right in and onto the paper. Picking out a series of indentations on the first line of the topmost sheet. The marks of someone pressing hard into the sheet that must have been above this one, so hard that he pressed right through. 

Ash traced the indentations with his finger. 

Gra 

Graham. Grain. Groudon. Gramps. 

An image struck Ash. A scene. 

Gary sitting right at this desk, pen hesitating right in the middle of this first word. Then, putting the pen down and tearing the page free, crumpling it up, and throwing it in to the bin next to the chair. Grabbing his coat from the hook on the door, patting the pocket to make sure his Pokéballs were there, and then heading out. The door clicking shut behind him. 

Gra

It could be any word. It could have been written by anyone. 

“Pika,” whispered Pikachu, touching its warm, softly-furred paw to Ash’s cheek. 

Ash put the paper back where he had found it. His hands were shaking so badly that he lost control and slammed the drawer shut, when he’d meant to be gentle. 

The lump on the bottom bunk stirred, but didn’t wake. 

He walked down the stairs, raised a hand to the Wigglytuff, and stepped outside. 

The sky was no brighter than it had been when he left Dawn’s house. The snow that had piled up on the driveway was still there, broken only where Ash had broken it, and melting only just around the perimeter of the Centre, where heat and light combined to create warmth. 

Ash was still shaking, and not from the cold. 

“We’ll find him, buddy,” he said. “We’ll find him, whatever that means.”

He was climbing back into the guest room just as somewhere else in the house, a door banged open. Or shut. And Dawn was yelling, “We’re late!”

The next trek to the Pokémon Centre was a lot noisier. In a Sinnoh winter, the nights lengthened early, but in a farming town like Twinleaf, the days began no later. Despite the dark, lights blazed in the windows of all the houses, damping the starlight and the moonlight, and people were singing and shouting and calling out to each other through open doors and over garden fences low enough to vault. Many of them yelled their greetings to Dawn with a cheer and enthusiasm that, Ash realised, Dawn had picked up in spades. 

They waited just out of reach of the automatic sliding doors, watching Pikachu, Piplup, and Dawn’s Quilava get under the feet of the Jigglypuff shovelling snow from the path. The Pokémon was starting to puff up, but Pikachu and Piplup had always liked to play with fire. 

“Sorry,” said Dawn suddenly. “About last night. Officer Jenny already said that it’s a small possibility. Really small. That there’s lots of evidence that says otherwise. I was just scared, and I made you scared, too.”

“Don’t be sorry. You wanted to talk to someone. I’m just glad you felt you could talk to me.”

He waited for her to say something else. She didn’t. 

“And,” he said. “You don’t need to be scared. It’s a small possibility, like you said. Non-existent, really. It’ll be fine. You’ll see. It’ll be fine.”

So they stood there in silence, watching their Pokémon play, until Officer Jenny arrived. Her Viridian counterpart was yawning on the seat behind her. She must have taken a later ferry, and gotten in last night. The Oreburgh City Gym Leader was there too, his shock of red hair wrestled under a Christmas-theme beanie. Roark didn’t remember Ash, but there was no time to catch up in any case. 

They gathered around the map on Twinleaf Jenny’s phone, and she pointed out to them the sections they were supposed to be searching, and what landmarks to look out for. Then, she handed Ash a pair of binoculars, and told him to make sure to loop the string around his neck. These things were expensive. 

The Officers Jenny released a Pidgeot and a Staraptor and two Chimchars they’d borrowed from Professor Rowan; Ash the Charizard he’d retrieved from Professor Oak, which drew some oohs and aahs, and a jealous slap on the back from Dawn; Dawn her Togekiss, which drew more oohs and aahs; and Roark, an Aerodactyl and a familiar-looking Flareon. 

Seeing that he was staring at it, Roark smiled. “This is a fossil Pokémon. Quite rare. Spent months in the Underground digging for one, and well worth it too. She’s a keeper.”

The Aerodactyl tossed its head and shook out its wings, basking in the praise. 

“Ash knows what it is,” scoffed Dawn. “When one got loose in Oreburgh all those years ago, he triple-teamed it with you and Brock! Even though I was the one who helped Dr. Kenzo recapture it.”

Roark blinked and adjusted his glasses. “Oh, I see, you’re that Trainer! Didn’t click for a moment there. I see. You were from Pallet Town, weren’t you? You and Gary must have grown up together.”

Viridian Jenny said, “Best friends. Troublemakers, the two of them.”

They were waiting on him to say something. To react.

His voice came out smaller than he’d meant. “Gary revived an Aerodactyl.”

“Ah,” said Roark. “Ah, yes, Professor Rowan mentioned something like that. He used a fossilised egg to do it, didn’t he? Ah, yes. Since you visited Oreburgh, you must have been to the Mining Museum. There’s a research team there that specialises in resurrecting fossils. They offered to employ him as a PhD student there. Ingenious, really, using an egg. Pretty much unrepeatable, as an experiment, but ingenious. And he was, what, twelve? Pity he didn’t take them up on the offer.”

“An unrepeatable result,” Professor Oak had said, while accepting a cup of Mum’s ginger tea. “Thank you, Mr Mime. Fossilised eggs are even rarer than fossils, you see. But still, it shows that he’s creative. You’d be surprised how important creativity is to a researcher.”

“If only Ash was more book-smart,” Mum had said. “He has creativity in spades, but I’m afraid it seems to have knocked out everything else in his brain, including common sense!”

Ash, slumped over the side of the sofa, had groaned. “Come on, Mum, I’ve got lots of things to do before leaving for Sinnoh. Gary’s already left. Can I please, please be excused?”

“Don’t be rude. The professor came especially to say goodbye – ”

“We could have said goodbye tomorrow, at the lab!”

He’d never asked about Gary, but Professor Oak and Daisy and Mum, they must have talked about him once in a while. Ash had just forgotten. Shedding memories the way, travelling from region to region, he shed people and Pokémon; making best friends in the space of months, only to say goodbye in months. And usually, to never see them again. 

“Another offer? Which he also turned down?” Twinleaf Jenny was asking. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“It was two years ago. I didn’t think it was relevant.”

“Everything could be relevant, Roark, this is why I said to tell me everything you knew.”

“How is it relevant?”

“That isn’t the point.”

“All right,” said Viridian Jenny. “That’s enough bickering in front of the kids, don’t you think? Let’s start. We’re wasting time.”

As they climbed onto their Pokémon, Dawn whispered, “Ash, are you okay?”

He didn’t want to lie to her. “Don’t worry.”

Unlike Dragonite, Charizard liked to show off. And so with a mighty thump of his wings and a loud growl, he shot up towards the stars. 

They searched all morning. 

Charizard and Pikachu had sharper eyes, and Charizard could sense heat signatures even better than he could see. Still, Ash did his best to look too, training his binoculars down at the clearings and through the trees. 

The higher up the mountain they flew, the sparser the canopy, until forest gave way to rock, upon which shrubs and flowers clung, sometimes with breathtaking precariousness. The sun climbed with them, until Ash looked back the way they came, and felt his breath catch.

Noiselessly, the morning fog had retreated, leaving cloud shadows to chase each other across house and tree and plain, all the way to wooded cliffs that plunged into the ocean and lost themselves beneath the glitter of the waves. Tucking in his gaze, he could see Lake Verity winking up at him from where it was nestled in the foothills of the mountain range. A range that stretched out on either side of him and further north; a country of rock and brush and dramatic slopes, the snow that covered it falling thicker and reaching further down with each winter day. 

Ash didn’t know how long he sat there looking, before Charizard craned its head around and let out a questioning grunt. 

“Sorry,” said Ash. “Got distracted. Come on, let’s climb higher.”

An hour past noon, stomach rumbling, the back of his neck and his arms burning, he landed on the strip of grass between Lake Verity and the surrounding forest. 

“You’re late,” said Viridian Jenny. “We were getting worried. This is a team exercise, young man, and we can’t afford to be looking for you as well as the person who’s actually missing. Not to mention that it’s too hot to be flying right now.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I lost track of time.”

She was still frowning at him. But she sighed. “I guess you didn’t find anything.”

He shook his head. 

“We won’t be flying again until three or so. Go get yourself something to eat and ask Dawn to fill you in. Us adults have things to discuss.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

There wasn’t much to be filled in on. So he ate his lunch and listened to Dawn complain that Quilava was having trouble scanning for heat signatures from such a height, not being a flying type and all. 

When he was done, they lay down in the shade, Ash on his borrowed windbreaker and Dawn on her duffle coat, cap and hat shielding their eyes from the sun. 

Usually, the noise of the forest and the lake would have calmed him down. The rustle of the breeze through the leaves, the chirping Starly, the lower grunts of the Bidoof, the lap of the lake against the grassy shore, sometimes turning into a splash when a Psyduck surfaced, or a Magikarp pushed its mustard-coloured crown above the water. 

But his mind raced with his thoughts. 

When at last, Viridian Jenny called to them to get up, Dawn didn’t look any more rested than he did. 

They searched again until night fell, and then stumbled back to Dawn’s home, where her mother fed them and sat watching them eat, forehead creased. Then, they showered and stumbled into their own rooms, and their own beds, where Ash made a call to Professor Oak, and then closed his eyes to dream a lot of things that didn’t make sense, and yet when he’d woken, did. 

Departing again in moonlight, they met the two Jennys and Roark. Ash went to the terminal in the Pokémon Centre. Professor Oak had sent him his Talonflame. 

Dawn stared at the Pokémon in awe. “This is why I wanted to go to Kalos! I thought Charizard was the only fire/flying type.”

But Talonflame didn’t help them find Gary. 

That day, or the next, or the next. 

Gary was thought to have gone missing on the seventh of November. On the fourteenth, an investigation had been opened into his disappearance. Now, six days later, none of his acquaintances had seen him or heard from him; no one had called in with information on him; no kidnapper had gotten in touch with their demands; none of the police officers looking all over Sinnoh and Kanto had discovered anything; and no matter how much mountain their five-person team tried to cover, there were miles and miles more to go. 

The Jennys were looking graver and graver, and Roark had taken to eyeing Ash and Dawn as though there was something he needed to say, only to look away when they looked back. 

Dawn had not brought up the same issue again. But on the sixth night, in the dead quiet of the house, Ash could hear her crying, and her mother shushing her, voice gentle in a way that reminded him of his own mother. 

And for the first time since he could remember, Ash wished his mum was here. 

He pulled the covers over his head. When that wasn’t enough, he wrapped his arms around himself. His breath came out harsh and hot. The noise or the heat woke Pikachu, who stirred beside him and opened a sleepy eye.

“Hey there, buddy.”

Both eyes opened. “Pika?”

“Pikachu, I’m scared.”

“Chu.” Her cheek pouches sparked. 

He chuckled. “Not that kind of scared.”

But his throat had closed over the rest. Saying it would hurt. Not saying it would choke him. “I’m scared of myself.”

At five to six, Dawn hugged her mother goodbye. They trudged silently, and in her case, swollen-eyed towards the bright lights of the Pokémon Centre. For the first time, the other three had all gotten there before them. The resoluteness in their postures was identical. 

“Today is the last day,” said Twinleaf Jenny.

Ash had guessed as much. It seemed that Dawn had, too. Neither of them said anything. Piplup pawed at her leg, trilling. 

“We haven’t told the two of you everything. Not because we don’t trust you or because we don’t think you can handle it. You are accomplished at what you do, and you’ve seen more of the world than most of us. But you’re still children, and we wanted to spare you while we could. Unfortunately, that ends today.”

Piplup fell silent. Pikachu sat upright on Ash’s shoulder, digging her paws into his cap.

Twinleaf Jenny first looked at Dawn, who clenched her fists, and then at him. It was all Ash could do not to flinch away. Her gaze still fixed on his, she said, “Gary Oak has been missing for two weeks. No one has seen him. No one has heard from him. And no one has demanded a ransom for him. At this point, we are considering three scenarios. In the best-case scenario, he’s alive and well and doesn't want to be found. In the other two, he’s been kidnapped and the kidnappers aren’t ready to or don’t plan to ransom him; or he’s dead.” 

Someone whimpered. Dawn. 

“Continuing to search the mountains will not help Gary in any of these three scenarios. Nor, should this turn into a criminal investigation, can the two of you be involved. Officer Jenny, Roark, and I are going to do one last search today. After that, we’ll be moving on to other areas of the search effort. If either of you wants to call it a day and go home, then do. You’ve both been incredibly brave. It’s a testament to Gary’s character that he has friends like you, and there’s no shame, no shame at all in – ”

“We’ll go,” said Dawn, seeming to pull her voice out of herself by force. Pulled taut enough to snap. “I’ll go. Ash?”

Pikachu’s fur was pressing into Ash’s neck, staticky with fresh electricity. 

“Ash?”

“Don’t pressure him, Dawn – ”

“I’m not, I – ”

“I’m not,” said Ash. 

All four of them stared at him. 

He said, “I’m not a good friend. I haven’t seen him, or talked to him, or even asked after him in four years. And that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that Gary’s not the only one. I call Professor Oak more often than I call my mum, and usually because I need a favour, or he need a favour from me, or he tells me to outright, because Mum almost never does. 

“I meet people and then I ditch them and move on, and never think about them again. I’m not looking for Gary because I’m his friend. I’m looking for him because I’m the worst kind of person. I’m just like my – ”

It hit him then, exactly what he was saying. Who he was saying it to. Three near-strangers and a fourteen-year-old girl. A secret that he could barely tell himself, in the dark, with only Pikachu to overhear him. 

The backs of his boots were pushing up against snow. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t think I can come today. Please, take Charizard and Talonflame. They’d be happy to help.”

Fumbling for their Pokéballs in his pocket, he dropped more than threw them, releasing the two Pokémon to shake out their wings in the biting cold. “Guys, listen to Dawn and Officer Jenny, okay?”

Viridian Jenny stepped forward, reaching out a gloved hand. “Ash, wait – ”

But he was already running. Slipping in the snow, and then finding his footing, and running, just running back the way he came; past the way he came; back and back and back.

He skidded to a stop on a cliff. The woods behind him, and a sheer drop before him; grass-capped grey stone, swooping down onto a strip of beach that was, really, little more than rubble piled just above the reach of the foaming sea. 

At some point, Pikachu had jumped from his shoulder and started running alongside him. Her fur glistened with sweat, and she was scowling. “Pika pika!”

Collapsing onto the grass beside her, he tugged at the zipper of his windbreaker with one hand and reached for her with the other. She shied away at first, and then nuzzled his palm, buzzing it. 

“Sorry,” he said. 

“Pikachu.”

“Don’t look so worried,” Ash said to Pikachu. “It’s nothing. I’m – I’ll be fine.”

As he spoke, his voice was crumbling. 

Professor Oak had said this to him once. “You’d think that Pokémon would be easier to understand. They speak, but make no sense, so they can’t lie to us, can’t mislead us with words. All we can rely on is their tones of voice, their expressions, their behaviour. Some people believe that makes them more honest than human beings.”

“What those people don’t know, Ash, is that seventy percent of human communication isn’t in words at all. Would you say humans are honest? Pokémon are more like us than we think.”

Ash wasn’t fine. Everything wasn’t fine, and he didn’t know that it would all be fine. And he hadn’t wanted to lie to Dawn, or to the granny on the ferry, or to Pikachu, especially Pikachu, who was his best friend in the world. He hadn’t even thought that he was lying. 

And yet, was saying something he didn’t believe, really any different from lying? 

It was evening when he mustered the courage to go back. His stomach was rumbling. The food was with Roark and Twinleaf Jenny. He’d only had Berries for Pikachu in his backpack. 

Dawn was already home. Her hair damp from the shower, her arms crossed. On the kitchen table, Piplup crossed his wings too, claws planted between Ash’s Pokéballs like an angry mother hen. 

“It looked like rain,” she said. “So we called it a day.”

He tugged his cap down. Then pushed it back up. “Sorry I couldn’t help.”

“I think you should be apologising to your Pokémon. It’s not like you at all, to ditch them without so much as a by-your-leave.”

His eyes strained against tears. “Sorry, guys.”

Charizard’s Pokéball jiggled carelessly. Talonflame’s almost seemed to shrug. Pikachu squeaked a greeting at them, but didn’t leave Ash’s shoulder. 

Now that he’d started, he didn’t think he could stop. 

Dawn said, “Not my fault, huh? I can’t believe you let me say all that, and kept your own mouth shut.”

“Sorry.”

“Please stop saying that.”

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of the windbreaker. It crackled. Pikachu leaned into his ear, her ears twitching against the side of his cap. 

“You know,” she said. And he could hear the tears in her voice, too. “What you said. None of it is true, right? You are a good friend. One of the best. So you’ve lost touch with people. You’ve never ditched anyone who’s needed you. You’ve never left anyone behind. I know, Ash. Because you’re my friend. And I was going to go after you, but Officer Jenny said to give you your space, I should have gone after you, because you would have done that for me in a heartbeat. I know it. And Gary – he knows it too.”

They were both crying now. 

Closing the distance between them, he hugged her. She buried her face in his jacket. 

And he lied. “It’ll be fine. You’ll see. It’ll all be fine.”

Early on 22nd November, Ash and Viridian Jenny boarded the ferry back to Kanto. 

Last night’s storm lingered in the air, turning the morning air from ice-cold to bone-chilling. The pier extending out into the bay glistened wet, and was only getting wetter; the waves, humping along ill-temperedly under the hulls of each anchored ship, were so swollen with rain that some heaved themselves right up over the wooden planks, only to pour back down through the gaps. 

Ash heard Officer Jenny before he saw her. Her boots thumping on the deck behind him, and her gloved hands coming to rest on the rail beside his. 

She said, “It’s his birthday today.”

“Pikachu.”

Smiling up at Pikachu, Ash said, “Happy birthday to him, I guess.”

Her fingers drummed a familiar rhythm on the metal. “Ash. About what you said yesterday.”

“Officer,” he said. Abruptly. Loudly. “I had a question. You said that if I had a question, I should come to you, and not go looking for horror stories on the Internet.”

The drumming stopped. “So I did. Go on.”

It was rude not to look at someone when you were talking to them. Mum had told him this over and over again, when he was too focused on the TV or his So You Want to Be a Pokémon Master books. 

So he turned his head, meeting her eyes. 

“The other Officer Jenny said that in the second scenario, where Gary’s been kidnapped, his kidnappers might not be planning to ransom him. What might they be planning to do then?”

“Either they don’t plan to ransom him, or they aren’t ransoming him just yet,” she corrected. And then sighed. “The answer to your question isn’t a pretty one. But I have a feeling that you’re going to tell me to give it to you, anyway. Kidnappers have a few different motivations, Ash. My sister-in-law back in Viridian could explain it all to you in detail; it was her Masters dissertation. But, roughly, it’s like this.

“Most of the time, kidnappers want money. So they make the individual retrieve his own ransom, or they contact his family and friends. Sometimes they do both. In other cases, kidnappers are looking to blackmail. They take someone or something that’s important to their target, and they blackmail their target into doing very risky, highly illegal things in order to get back that important person or thing. In other cases, and these are much rarer, the reasons behind the kidnapping are political or.” She hesitated. “Or just sick. Just, mindlessly and pointlessly violent.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s only a very tiny percentage of all the kidnappings that occur.”

“But what does it mean?” 

He was gripping the railing so tightly that the curve of it was burned into his palms. 

“There are people in this world who are – wrong, Ash. Wrong in the head. Some of them were born that way. Some of them were made that way. Whichever it is, they – they like to hurt people. In a very, very tiny percentage of the kidnappings that occur, the motivation is to cause pain.”

“And.” He swallowed. But his throat was dry as a desert. “And Gary’s kidnappers. They don’t want money. They would have called by now if that’s what they wanted. So he’s being blackmailed. Or he is blackmail. Or he’s hurting. Just because.”

“It’s not that simple. It might be that they haven’t settled on a sum for the ransom yet. And in any case, Ash, we are talking about hypothetical kidnappers here. A kidnapping is only one of the scenarios.”

“One of the other scenarios is that he’s dead.” Maybe by his own hand. 

But Ash wasn’t Dawn. Wasn’t brave enough to say it. 

He let go of the railing. Constricted by its nearness. Constricted by the nearness of everything. Officer Jenny, the waves pushing against the side of the ferry, the straps of his backpack, digging into his skin. Only Pikachu’s presence wasn’t suffocating. 

“Sorry,” he said. “Thanks for answering my question.”

Far out towards the horizon, the violent, dark blue ocean coming up against a sky still bruised from the storm, a school of Tentacruel broke surface. Their bulbous red eyes glinted in the sun. Then they disappeared back under the waves. 

Officer Jenny said, “When your dad left home, your mum asked me to look for him.”

His gaze snapped back to hers. She met it as steadily as she had the first time. 

“What for,” Ash demanded. “He didn’t go missing. He left. She knew that.”

“She was desperate. And the truth hurt too much. You’re old enough for me to tell you all this now. And, well, as you know, your mum and I have known each other a long time. And your dad and I, ever since they were married and he moved to Pallet. So I decided to do them both a favour. I looked for him. And I found him.”

Ash was gripping the railing so tightly that the curve of it was burned into his palms. “So what?” He was being rude. “He didn’t want to come back. The end. Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because,” she said. “I asked your dad to come home. If he couldn’t do that, I asked him to at least give your mum a call, or write her a letter once in a while, so that she wouldn’t worry and you wouldn’t grow up not knowing your father. If he couldn’t do even that, then I asked him to post her the divorce papers, so that the two of you could move on. He wouldn’t come home. And he was too much of a coward to do anything else.”

“I’m telling you this, Ash, because I think that yesterday, you were going to say that you were like him. Your dad. I know how Delia explained it to you. And I understand why she chose to. But your dad didn’t leave the way he did because he loved Pokémon too much, and couldn’t stop journeying. He left the way he did, without calling, without writing, without dropping by to see his family even once,” her voice was hardening. “Because the only person he loved was himself.”

Just then, someone hollered down from the bridge. “Officer! Kid! They are wanting you back down on the docks, Ninjask-quick.”

Ash stared up at him. Pikachu moved first, leaping from his shoulder and darting across the deck. Ash ran after her. 

Stumbling onto the pier, he could see Dawn as a pink-and-blue figure in the distance, jumping and waving her hands. Seeing him looking, she gestured towards the pier office, and then sprinted in that direction herself. 

The pier didn’t cater to much traffic other than the ferry from Kanto, which stopped by on its way to Canalave and Sunsyshore. Most arrivals were first-time Trainers looking to get their first Pokémon from Professor Rowan himself, researchers, and relatives of the people who lived in Sandgem and the small towns and villages that surrounded it. 

As though to match its humble role, the pier office was a ramshackle, one-storey, two-room building. One room was crammed with a desk, a sunken couch, a dozen maps, a vase full of fishing rods, more fish-related knick-knacks on the walls and shelves than Ash could digest at a glance, and the kind of old-fashioned PC that Pokémon Centres still had for Trainers who didn’t have roaming data, or local SIM cards, or as was the case for many kids, phones of their own. 

Pokémon journeys were when you struck out on your own. Became independent.

Many people still believed that. Ash hadn’t gotten a phone till he turned eighteen. He didn’t know anyone else who had, either. 

Twinleaf Jenny was standing before the PC. Roark, off to the side, turned at Dawn’s and Ash’s entrance, and put a finger to his lips. He made shooing motions, so that they approached also from the side. 

From this angle, there was enough distance between Jenny and the PC for Ash to see the screen without being seen in return. 

Ash saw Gary. 

He sucked in a breath so sharp that he swallowed air. In front of him, Dawn had frozen. 

“ – sorry, Officer,” Gary was saying. “I didn’t mean to cause a ruckus.”

“That’s not my primary concern right now. Where are you? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He didn’t sound fine. He sounded exhausted. And was it just the poor image quality, or was he pale?

“I just needed to get away for a while. Didn’t think it’d alarm anyone. This isn’t my first rodeo, as far as travelling goes.” His eyes darted away, then back again. “Look, Officer. I gotta go. Can you tell my folks I’m fine, and that I need some time to myself. I’ll contact them when I’m ready.”

“Gary, wait. Before I let you go, I need to be satisfied that you are safe. Can we meet?”

His eyes darted away again. When he spoke, he sounded like the kid Ash had known at ten. Brash, arrogant, and a stranger. “Look, Officer. I’m eighteen today. You can’t make me do anything. I look fine, I sound fine, did you want a heart-to-heart? Smell ya.”

“Just a minute, Gary – ”

But his hand was moving to end the call. 

There was no time to think. “Hey!” Ash stepped into sight of the monitor.

Gary’s eyes went wide. 

Ash clenched his hands to stop them shaking. “Hey, Gary. Don’t be like my dad, okay?”

His friend was staring at him, mouth open. And then he licked his lips. “I’m not.”

The screen went black. 

Officer Jenny’s voice bounced off the rafters. “Ash Ketchum!”

Dawn jumped. Piplup flapped around her legs. “What? What?”

Ash said, “He said he’s not, ma’am. Not like my dad. He didn’t leave because he wanted to. He’s been kidnapped.”

“That is not the problem here right now!” She was flushing, not out of embarassment. Rage. “Kidnappers aren’t stupid. They can figure out who you are, they can figure out your history, and you know what, they don’t even have to. You don’t think they recognised your cryptic dialogue for what it is? You don’t think that Gary might suffer for what you encouraged him to do?”

Behind them, Viridian Jenny said, “Officer.”

“What do you mean?” Pikachu was growling, tail standing straight up. Pulling her up into his arms, Ash repeated with a forcefulness he didn’t feel, “What do you mean, he’ll suffer?”

Dawn said, “Can someone explain what’s going on? He said he was fine! Why are we talking about him being kidnapped? What’s this about Ash’s dad?”

“See?” Roark weighed in too. “I didn’t know what they were talking about, either. And at least this way we know for sure.”

“There are other, safer ways to know for sure, which don’t involve compromising the victim’s safety.”

“I’m not saying that what he did was right. You hear that, kid? I’m just saying we don’t have to assume the worst.”

“I’m a police officer. It’s my job to assume the worst.”

Ash’s voice burst out of him, loud, too loud. He was shouting. “What is the worst?”

“Kidnappers,” she said. “Don’t generally like it when their victims break the rules!”

Viridian Jenny said, “If they were going to hurt him, they would have done it at the start. When they were less sure they had control over the situation.”

“Just because they didn’t, doesn’t mean that they won’t.”

Through gritted teeth. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

Twinleaf Jenny looked over Ash’s head at her counterpart. For a long moment. Then, she brushed a hand over her face. “It’s my fault. I should have had Roark brief the two of you properly before letting you in here. Just. Don’t do something like that again.”

“I understand.” He ducked his head so that he was breathing in Pikachu’s fur, partly in apology, partly to hide from – something. From their gazes, from his own whirling thoughts. 

He had helped Gary. He had hurt him. He had probably hurt him. And yet, Gary’s words careened through his brain like a tornado: you need to know. And yet, Gary stood there with his back to Ash, coat in one hand, Pokéballs in his pocket. The door shutting behind him. 

Dawn sounded close to tears. “What are we going to do now?”

Ash imagined that he answered her. 

When I was three years old, someone turned his back on me. Shut the door behind him and never looked back. 

When I was six and dreaming about becoming a Pokémon Master, I would get scared sometimes. Scared that, going down the route that he had, I would end up becoming him. 

When I was ten, I met Pikachu. I saved her, and she saved me, and it was like a whole new world opened before me. I realised what I would do for someone, and what someone would for me in return.

And I haven’t looked back since.


	3. Chapter 3

In the days that followed, time became countable. 

Time had always been countable, of course. Ash had just never bothered to count it. There were too many things to see and to do. Even the spring he had turned ten, when school let out for the last time and his classmates were impatient for the cherry blossoms to flower and their journeys to start, Ash had been busy dreaming. 

So busy, Mum used to joke, that he almost missed his journey altogether!

But in the days since he’d returned to Cerise Lab, Ash would roll over and check his phone, and only seconds would have passed. The single changed digit blinking white on black, same as the rest. 

It didn’t help that he wasn’t really sleeping. Even the feverish nightmares he’d had throughout the search evaded him. At nights, he lay staring up at the scorch mark in the ceiling, listening to Go snore below him. In the daytime, he waded from task to task, and person to person, and Pokémon to Pokémon as though he were walking underwater. 

Sometimes the numbness was a welcome buffer between him and the constant anxiety that Officer Jenny’s scant and irregular updates, and Go’s uncertain concern, and the explosion of odd rumours and mini-documentaries and crying strangers in the media, did not relieve. 

Other times, the numbness terrified him, and he would think about asking Pikachu to electrocute him, just to prove that he wasn’t just like this, he wouldn’t always be like this – but when push came to shove, it felt like the wrong thing to do. And so he would call out Dragonite again, and take to the skies, and they would hover over Cerulean Bay, looking out over the sea. Trying to take comfort in the vastness of it. 

In how insignificant time was to something, at least. 

But days turned into weeks into a month. Reporters and men with cameras stopped trying to accost him or other people in Pallet. Officer Jenny’s updates were scanter and briefer and more hopeless. And Ash had gone from dozing at intervals to consecutive nights of nothing, nothing, until Go ordered him to tell someone or be told on. 

“Three, four nights of this and you’ll start hallucinating! Or pass out! How do you think Dragonite will feel if she drops you?”

So he told Professor Cerise. Whose face creased in all the same places as his daughter’s when she was upset. “Why didn’t you come to me earlier? You’re an employee here, Ash. Your welfare is one of my primary concerns.”

“Sorry, Professor. I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.”

The creases deepened. Then, the professor swivelled his chair away from Ash and opened a drawer. When he turned back, he was holding a card. 

“Here, this is the name of a doctor at Cerulean Hospital. The address is here too. Ask Go to take you there and ask for her, all right? Any of the Pokémon here who know Sing, or Snore, or Yawn could send you to sleep, but it’s best to ask a specialist first. We don’t want to risk you becoming reliant. She’ll able to advise you on how to improve your sleep through natural means, as well.”

He took the card. “Thanks.” 

When he about to stand up, the professor said, “Ash.”

“Yes, sir.”

The professor adjusted his spectacles. Cleared his throat. “I can’t imagine what it feels like to be waiting, and waiting, and not knowing. But. When my father died, I was surrounded by people who loved me, and who had lost him too. I still felt like I was alone. I just want you to know, Ash, that you’re not. Alone.”

It should have been embarassing. It was, a little. The professor was technically his superior. But the kindness in his voice was so like Ash’s mum that Ash caught himself thinking that maybe talking to his dad would have been like this. Had he stayed. 

“Thank you, Professor. I really appreciate it.”

Go went with him to the hospital, where the doctor asked him a bunch of questions and then said, “It should be all right to ask a Pokémon to put you to sleep for a week at most, and see whether that resets your sleep clock. But that won’t help with the underlying causes for your insomnia. What do you think about seeing a counsellor?”

Pikachu jumped up from the floor and onto the arm of Ash’s chair. “Pika.”

Ash tickled her behind the ears. “What’s a counsellor?”

“Well.” The doctor clicked her mouse a few times, then turned to look at Ash properly. “It seems like you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. A counsellor would talk you through any issues you’ve been facing, and maybe that would help you sleep better.”

When Ash’s fingers stopped moving, Pikachu glanced up quizzically.

“What issues?”

The doctor tilted her head. Then smiled. “Many people see counsellors at one time or another. It’s more common than you think. You’d be surprised how many health-related problems can be alleviated by talking to someone trained in the business of listening.”

His fingers dug into Pikachu’s fur. Then, abruptly and guiltily, loosened.

“Can I think about it?”

She swivelled back to her screen. “I’ve got your details here. Call my extension, and the nurse will connect you with a counsellor. In the meantime, give it a good think, all right? Whether there’s anything you’d like to say.”

Outside, Go was sitting on a worn leather chair, feeding Berries to Raboot. “So?”

Ash shrugged. “Ever see a Snorlax?”

Go hadn’t.

He was ecstatic.

And that night, his body rising and falling gently on Snorlax’s enormous tummy, Pikachu on his head, and the stars visible through the glass dome of Cerise Park, Ash fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. 

When he woke with the sun on his face, he could think again. Enough to make the decision he should have made ages ago. Calling Snorlax back into its ball, he started off at a run. 

And burst into Cerulean Police Station. 

“Officer Jenny, I know you’ve said over and over again, but I want to help! It’s a criminal investigation, I get it, but I’ve helped take down criminals before. Really, I’ll listen to everything you say, and I won’t step out of line even once, and I think I could help – ”

The officer on duty finally managed to cut in. “She’s not here. She’s in Pallet.”

“Oh,” said Ash. “Oh, right. Sorry.”

The woman stared hard at him. “You’re that kid, aren’t you? The one who went on the mountain search. Been coming round and pestering the Officer every few days. Friend of Gary Oak.” 

He scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry about that. I guess I was getting in the way more than I thought.”

“Yeah, well. I get why you want to help, and I don’t honestly see much wrong with it. You’ve got stronger Pokémon than most of the greenies we get come April. But you’re not a cop, and Jenny’s pretty strict about professional boundaries and all that. You want to help? Go visit the family in Pallet. They need all the support they can get.” 

Listening to her, Ash was starting to realise that he had been in a pit, before. Before Professor Cerise and the sleep doctor and Snorlax Snoring him to sleep, he had been wandering lost in a pit, with no way out. And sure, he had climbed out now. But it was there, at his feet. He was skirting the very edge. 

Still, what could he do?

Officer Jenny was right. 

He’d already done one stupid, reckless thing. Who was to say he wouldn’t do any more?

“Okay.” Bowing his head, he turned to go. 

“Kid.” The officer’s voice was sharp. “I mean it. Go today. You hear?”

He hunched his shoulders. Did she have to be so mean? It wasn’t like he was being a bother on purpose. “All right!”

Running out, he flung a Pokéball into the air. “Dragonite, I choose you!”

The fly over calmed him down. Once Dragonite was reassured that he was awake now, and no, he wasn’t going to lose his grip and fall off like he almost had before, she was happy to set a lazy course to Pallet, missing Viridian Forest entirely to glide on the warm currents rising up from the ocean, until they were within sight of Cinnabar Island. 

Looking down on the black, craggy slopes of the volcano, and remembering the gym hidden inside it, Ash had to smile. 

And then he remembered Gary in his stupid Hawaiian print shirt, so confidently telling Ash that there was no gym anymore, it was a resort, and it hurt to smile. Touching Dragonite’s flank, he said, “Let’s head west now, buddy.”

Squealing happily, Dragonite lowered one wing, swooping left. 

Cinnabar fell away behind them. 

Instead of taking the steps up to Oak Lab, Ash walked down into Pallet proper. Everyone here knew him, and he knew everyone, so there was much bowing and greeting. But they seemed to sense that he didn’t want to talk, and didn’t draw him into longer chats about how he had grown so tall, and when was he running off on another Pokémon journey, he really was an adventurous boy, wasn’t he?

Back when he and Gary were little, Gary and Daisy had lived with Professor Oak in a sprawling, rundown farmhouse surrounded by rice paddies that a neighbouring farmer rented from the family. Professor Oak certainly could not be bothered to carry on his parents’ work. It used to be fun, to run about in the forests behind, with only Daisy and her Clefairy to make sure no rules were broken, and no one got hurt. 

But then Gary had left on his journey, and Daisy had arranged the sale of the farm to the neighbour. Bought another house in Pallet proper, moved all their things there, and then turned up to the lab with a copy of the keys for Professor Oak and the declaration that she, Daisy, was headed to Goldenrod to earn a license in grooming.

Ash still remembered the look on the professor’s face as he had regaled Ash and his mum with this tale: part embarassment at being the talk of the town, part pride in the independence and resourcefulness of his granddaughter. 

It’d been the talk of the town, too when Daisy, unlike Ash and unlike Gary, had come back. 

The house she’d bought for her grandfather stood on the edge of town, beside the river. On the other side, two girls and a boy were catching anchovies in little plastic nets. When a Magikarp wandered past, breaking up the school of tiny, silver fishes, the children jumped and shouted. 

So caught up in watching them was Ash that, when someone cleared her throat next to him, he jumped too. 

“Pika!”

“Sorry, Pikachu, ah, Daisy!”

She laughed. The sound surprised Ash into speechlessness. The incongruity. It seemed to surprise her too, and for a moment they simply stared at each other. The garden hose she held hissed over the morning glories twined around the garden fence. Hissing, hissing.

And then she clicked the nozzle, shutting off the water. 

In the sudden silence, the children’s voices rang clear and true. Floating over the river towards them like bubbles that, catching the light at just the right angle, shone with all the colours of the rainbow. 

Daisy blinked once, hard, then smiled. “You’re really not like him at all. Are you, Ash?”

The inside of the house unsettled him. He wasn’t sure why. Only that there were so many things he recognised in it, like the school prizes, and Contest ribbons, and Gym badges in the fancy cabinet; and the cushions embroidered with fairy Pokémon on the pristine, leather couches; and the tea set that Daisy served him with, the only difference being that Rattata-themed coasters now substituted for saucers that must have been lost in the move. 

“Let me pour it – ”

“No, you just sit, you’re a guest.”

“But – ”

“Sit.”

So he sat and watched tea stream steaming into his cup. Pikachu moved restlessly from across his shoulders, then slid off completely to nudge its head into Clefable’s side. 

“Cle,” said the Pokémon, handing over an Oran Berry.

“Pika.”

When Daisy was done pouring, she sat down in the armchair adjacent to him, and smoothed down her skirt. It was a natural movement the first time. But then she kept smoothing it, her arms so rigid that her elbows seemed locked in pace. After a moment, she seemed to sense him watching her, and met his gaze. Her smile was rigid, too. 

“So,” he said into the quiet. “How are ya doin – ” 

“I’m surprised you came down here and not up to – ”

They blinked at each other. 

Pikachu ducked under the table with her Oran Berry. Ash wished he could, too. 

“I’m doing as well as can be expected,” said Daisy, at last. “Took some leave from work to be here for Gramps, and honestly, because I couldn’t think. But Gramps is holed up in his lab, and I was going crazy between watching him there and sitting here alone, so I’ve been doing some house calls. But you know Pallet. The Pokémon here are ridiculously healthy.”

His mouth twitched. More of a spasm.

She said, “So. I was thinking that I’d go back to work next week.”

She had gone back to smoothing her skirt down, smoothing and smoothing. Then, abruptly, she stopped and picked up her cup. Took a long sip. 

“That sounds like a great idea?”

The question in his tone amused her. If the panic building up behind her grin could be called amusement. “It does, doesn’t it. I do miss the stroll up to Viridian and back. And all my patients. There aren’t really that many ill Pokémon here. Or Pokémon at all, outside the lab.”

She put the cup down and lowered her head, holding it in her hands. 

“You know,” she said. “I wanted to go on a Pokémon journey too. When I was ten. I wanted to take Clefairy to see all his friends on Mount Moon as a fully fledged Trainer, I wanted to introduce Chansey to her cousins in all the Pokémon Centers, I wanted to win all the ribbons and all the cups, and make my parents proud.”

“You did,” said Ash, confused. He remembered seeing her off with Gary at the door to the lab, seeing her turning back and waving, Clefairy snug in her other arm. And Gary refusing to wave back, arms crossed and head down. 

Except, that couldn’t be right, because Daisy was four years older than Gary and should have been on her journey already, when the bird Pokémon collided. 

“I did. I went twice. The first time, it was everything that I dreamed it would be. But then, you know, I had to come back. The second time, the time I got to do everything I’d wanted to do, I loved every second. Loved it almost as much as I hated it.”

The words that followed were hollow, and tired. As though she had whittled away at them so many times for so many years that the insides had rotten away, leaving only shell. 

“Gramps isn’t bad as guardians go. He loves us very much. He was there for us after our parents died, and he tried to be home more often. He really did. It’s not his fault that he’s busy. He’s a renown researcher, after all. People come from all over to study under him and to work with him. That didn’t mean that in the day-to-day, you know, that it wasn’t just me and Gary. Me and my kid brother. How could I leave him on his own?”

“Professor Oak – ”

“When I was gone, would Gramps remember children couldn’t live on convenience store food? Would Gary do his homework and his chores, and not to tease you until you cried? Would anyone remember to trim the garden so that the weeds wouldn’t grow too wild and attract Caterpie?”

“Mum would have looked in on them for you. I would have – ”

“I know. I knew. Don’t you think I knew?”

Her face was still buried in her hands. “I was a kid. And none of this was my responsibility. Gramps and your mum told me this over and over again. So I know. Please, just listen?”

But he didn’t understand. If she had known, then why, why not just take the professor and Mum at their word and go on her journey, like she’d wanted to? Professor Oak could be absent-minded, but he wasn’t irresponsible. And he and Gary could look after themselves. Confusion and anger and sadness tangled inside him, and it only made him more confused. 

And then he remembered what Professor Cerise had said to him. And how he’d felt these six weeks. With Officer Jenny, and his mum, and Daisy, and the professor, and Go, and all the people at the lab, and his Pokémon, always his Pokémon beside him. 

He understood. 

“I’m listening.” 

“It wasn’t really Gramps I was worrying about. Or you two. Or the farm. Or school. It was because,” she sucked in a breath. Then let it out out. Let it all out. “I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there when a stupid drunk overrode his Pidgeot’s better sense and ended up killing my parents. I wasn’t there when the doctor pronounced them dead, to my six-year-old brother and his babysitter. I didn’t even know until the next day. Too busy teaching Clefairy combinations in Gampa Canyon, out of reach.

“Gary could have been the nicest, most considerate, most cautious kid in the world; Gramps could have been the most attentive, most responsible guardian in the universe; there could have been a hundred people in Pallet with nothing to do but check in on them for me; and it wouldn’t have mattered. My journey would have sucked, anyway. It would have sucked, because I would have, I did spend it all terrified. Because, I wasn’t there when some guy shot my world to pieces, and who’s to say that I wouldn’t be, again?”

Ash saw her again at thirteen, waving to her sullen brother and her best friend. Smiling so brightly, a spring in her step, and yet she kept looking back. And for the first time, he remembered something else too. How, once she’d passed from sight, Gary had run up to the professor’s empty study, and cried, and cried, and cried. 

He wondered now: once she’d passed from sight, had Daisy done the same? 

“But Gary was all right.” She laughed a little. “Gary was always raring to go. When he turned ten, he was off like a rocket, not a look back at his older sister. I was the one who’d been on a journey and a quarter, but when I returned, it was Gary who had grown up. Maybe not in the best way, but you know. At least he could look forward. At least he wasn't stuck. And that made me think, I needed to learn from him. I needed to do something. Go somewhere. Be someone. And enjoy it.”

Raising her head, she met Ash’s gaze. Her eyes were red, but dry. Her voice was gentle. “When I saw you standing outside my garden, Ash, I knew it was you. Of course, I did. Who else could it be, with that old cap, and Pikachu on your shoulder? But just for a moment, I let myself imagine that it was Gary. I let myself wonder, what would I say to him?”

It was hard not to drop his eyes. Harder to do something as simple as not move. But that was what she needed him to do. 

“I would say: I’m here this time. I’ll be here this time. And that,” her hands curled into fists on her lap. “Is just what I plan to do.”

The tea had gone cold on the table. Steam no longer curling up from the dainty, white cups, one with a chip in the handle. At some point, Pikachu had emerged from her hiding place and sat now next to Clefable, both of them watching Daisy with some apprehension. Ash had always believed that Pikachu could understand how he felt, if not what he said. And he believed that here and now, the Pokémon understood Daisy, too. 

“I wasn’t going to tell you this. I don’t even know whether I’m allowed to tell you. Or whether I should. But. There’s going to be an operation tonight. The police haven’t told me much. They don’t think there’s anything I can do, and they want to make things easier on me. They mean well. they’re right, I can’t do much, I was a Coordinator, not a Trainer, and I haven’t trained in years. But it’s different for them. They aren’t family. You, Ash. You are.”

Reaching over, she took his hand. Her touch was cool, her skin smooth. Nonsensically, he thought about how like her brother she was. Even though he didn’t remember what Gary’s hands looked like, and didn’t know when was the last time he’d touched them. 

“I’ll do the negotiating for you, so will you do something for me? Will you take my Clefable and go on the operation tonight?” 

He didn’t have to think this time. Didn’t have to consider her feelings, or pick his words. Because he saw now that all along, they had been speaking from the same heart. 

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

Daisy called Officer Jenny, who came down from the lab to sit in the living room and listen to the case put to her, stony-faced and tea untouched. 

“I can understand your concern. But, Daisy, there’s really no need. Of course we’ll put the safety of the victim first. And I might not be family, but I’ve known Gary since he was a little boy. I won’t let him get hurt.”

“Yes, Officer, but you have competing priorities here. Rescuing Gary and catching the criminals. Ash only has one priority. As Gary’s sister, I would be rest easier knowing he was part of this operation. Besides, Ash would only help you. He’s probably got more experience and firepower than all your beat cops combined.”

Officer Jenny removed her cap, and ran a hand through sweat-damp hair. “True as that may be, he’s not much more than a boy. He’s also shown a tendency to recklessness that we discipline right out of our recruits.”

Ash winced. 

“He’ll do exactly as you say this time.”

“I will, Officer.” On his shoulder, Pikachu squeaked her own oath. 

The officer didn’t look convinced. “This operation,” she hesitated. “It’s a hard operation, I can tell you that much. There’s a lot that could go wrong. As I’ve told you both at some point or another, this is not a task for amateurs.”

Daisy didn’t look convinced, either. She set her mouth. “When this started, Jenny, you told me that you would consult me and Gramps about all the important decisions.”

“That’s the standard operating procedure, yes. But I still have last say.”

“Right. So you’ve consulted with me, and I’ve told you that I want Ash along on this operation to make sure that Gary’s safety is put first. And you’ve decided to ignore me and go ahead as you planned. Let’s say that my brother doesn’t come back safe. What will the courts think about your standard operating procedure then?”

Officer Jenny’s mouth dropped open. Ash’s did too. 

“You’re threatening me. I’m not your enemy here! I’m only trying to do what’s best for you, and Gary, and Ash – ”

If only he could slide down and under the table like Pikachu, or slip out to lurk in the corridor like Arcanine and Clefable had been doing this whole time. 

“I’m not threatening you. I’m just telling you, this is how strongly I feel about what I’m asking. Ash won’t get in the way. He’ll do whatever you say. Think of him as a neutral bystander. A witness. What harm could it do? I think that it could only do some good.”

Daisy’s hands clenched in her lap. “Please.”

The tension on their faces mirrored the tension in Ash’s shoulders and the back of his neck, which locked his jaw and the joints in his hands. 

“All right,” said Officer Jenny. “All right.”

Ash had returned Charizard to Professor Oak before heading to Cerise Lab. That left him with Pikachu, Dragonite, Gengar, Snorlax, and a baby Riolu. Riolu couldn’t be brought into something like this, but Daisy had taught Clefairy all the moves he could learn before she’d let him evolve, making him a great addition to a strong team. 

Holding Riolu’s Pokéball in one hand, Daisy threw both arms around Ash and hugged him tight. “Be safe,” she said. “And thank you.”

When she let him go, her eyes were full of tears. The one she hadn’t cried when she first saw him; tears that raged at their own futilty. 

Thinking of the mountain range stretching out before him, that horizon of rock and brush and snow; thinking of Professor Cerise’s kind, awkward face; Ash said. “No, I’m thanking you, Daisy. For making this possible. Don’t worry about Clefable. I’ll take good care of him.”

Wiping her tears on her sleeve, she smiled. 

They didn’t go back to the lab, but curved right past it towards Viridian City. Speeding along the same streets, curving and winding between old buildings on old roads where the tar had worn to a chalk grey; and into the newer parts of the city, where he could see the bright purple tiles that decorated the Pokémon Trainers School, the one he and Gary used to atttend; and the curved glass back of the Pokémon Centre he’d first taken Pikachu to, all those years ago; and then they were back in the old city, where stone pillars rose up between brick and concrete to mark the rebuilt Viridian City Gym. 

Then, Officer Jenny was leaning left, and they had to be going to the gym, they had to, except that just as Ash could make out the patterns carved into the sandstone walls, she swerved sharply to the right, and took them into an alley, coming to a hard stop metres before three police officers and a black van. 

Ash recognised one of them, and she recognised him, waving as he slid off the motorcycle. 

“So,” she said. “You did go and see the family, after all.”

Officer Jenny frowned at her, then said, “You’re to stay with the van and with these officers, Ash. Manon, keep him out of trouble.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She beckoned Ash towards her, and walking around the van, opened one of the doors to the back. Following her inside, Ash had to squint at the sudden darkness. The glare from the small monitors along one wall made it even harder for his eyes to adjust; pulses of too-dim alternating with splotches of too-bright in his vision. 

She pointed him into a chair. Pikachu, who didn’t have his vision problems, sat up straight on his shoulder, looking around interestedly. 

When he could look around too, he realised that the monitors weren’t on the wall, but bolted to a counter that was itself bolted to the side of the van. The chairs they were sitting on were bolted down as well. On one screen, the fountain that bubbled before the Viridian gym was sparkling in the sun; on another, sunlight struck grey stone and lighter sandstone; on yet another, the same stone lurked in shadow; and on the last, a Rhydon dozing in its kennel in a garden, shaded by stone pillars. 

“What’s going on?” asked Ash. 

Manon said, “Gary’s kidnappers got in touch with Professor Oak. It looks like they want a ransom, after all.”

He stared at her. “But then, why – ”

“Either they wanted us off the trail before they made contact, or your little stunt in Sinnoh scared them into ditching their real plans.”

“Pika…”

He didn’t know whether to hang his head or just sit there, turning as red as a Charmander. “I’m sorry.”

“What for? They got in touch, didn’t they.”

Pikachu tapped her tail to the back of Ash’s neck in comfort. 

“How much are they asking for?” 

“That’s need-to-know only. And only the professor and Officer Jenny need to know.” 

“You don’t know, either?”

“That’s what I said.”

Comforting done, Pikachu slid down into Ash’s lap, and started nosing under the counter. 

“What is it, buddy?”

Manon laughed. The sound made her seem younger. “Probably the Poké Puffs.” 

Ducking under the counter, she produced a plastic bag of them, covered in apple frosting. 

“Where did you get those?” he exclaimed. 

Pikachu took one between her paws and started nibbling. There were lots more, after all. What did it matter to her where they were from?

“Father’s Kalosian,” said Manon. “Moved to Cerulean to live with Mum, then came out here to escape the divorce. He never liked Cerulean and its big, shiny newness. Viridian’s winding little streets and old buildings suit him better. I think they remind him of home. Anyway, his PokéPuffs sell at all the PokéMarts, right at the counter. They’re the best you’ll ever get in Kanto. Real homemade stuff.”

“I never knew.”

“Well. You must be one of those Trainers who just flies right over to Oak Laboratory. How do you know about Poké Puffs then?”

“Pika! Pika pi.”

Manon chucked her under the chin. Pikachu allowed this, probably distracted by the Puffs. “Another happy customer.”

He could probably wait to warn Manon when she looked like she was about to repeat the action. “Pikachu and I travelled around Kalos two years back. I had a friend who used to make these. Ones exactly like these, actually.”

“Your friend must be an excellent baker.”

Watching Pikachu munch away, he wondered what he was doing. Chatting away like this when Gary had been kidnapped, and they were waiting to rescue him. When Clefable was in his pocket, along with all Daisy’s fears and hopes. 

Gary wasn’t even a Trainer anymore. His Umbreon was rare, sure, but wasn’t the most high-levelled specimen of its type around. And what did his family have to offer? The lab had lots of funding, but under his lab coat, the professor wore the same shirts and trousers he’d worn as long as Ash could remember. The house Daisy had bought was just the right size for three people and a few Pokémon, in Pallet, where real estate prices weren’t exactly sky-high. 

Why had they taken him in the first place?

“Because he was there,” said Manon.

He’d spoken aloud. 

“Gary isn’t a Trainer anymore, and he was alone in the wilderness. Easy pickings. It didn’t matter whether his family had any money. It doesn’t even matter whether they can pay it all, now. Some money is better than none. And when they found out that the grandfather was a famous professor, and owned his own lab, do you think it mattered that the money wasn’t his? They would just have had him embezzle it somehow.” 

Holding another PokéPuff out to Pikachu, she got to her feet. “I’ve got to take care of some things. Watch these monitors carefully, and call me if you see anything, all right?”

Crumbs were falling onto Ash’s pants. Bits of frosting and fluffy muffin. Suddenly, he missed Kalos. He missed Serena’s kindness, and Bonnie’s energy, and Clement’s rock-solid belief in a better future. 

But he was here now. Daisy needed him. The professor needed him. Gary needed him. 

They needed him, but what was he really doing to help?

“Look here, Ash.”

Reluctantly, he raised his head. 

Manon’s arms were folded. The PokéPuffs dangled from the crook of her elbow. “The world is a bad place sometimes. That’s a fact. But that just means it’s up to people like you and me to make it a better one. You can’t give up now. Do you think that Gary has that choice?”

She was right. “You’re right,” he repeated aloud, where he could hear the words. The truth in them. “We haven’t spent all this time searching and worrying, just for me to get all down like this. I’ve just got to do my best. Like always.”

Her finger dropped back to her side. Her face softened into a smile. 

Ash couldn’t manage to smile back. But when she held the bag out to him and told him to give one or two more to Pikachu, he took it, and said thank you. 

Sitting in the van, time seemed to stand still. The boredom and anxiety of watching the monitors gave way to games of catch with Pikachu, and when that got PokéPuff crumbs all over the floor and the equipment, to flicking through entries on his Pokédex, and only eventually to checking out Trainer guides and pop science articles on his phone. He still didn’t like his phone very much. The screen hurt his eyes, and he used to be annoyed by the constant pinging from the Pallet Town chatroom that his mother had added him to; that is, until he had learned to mute it. 

The day Gary turned eighteen, the professor had probably been planning to buy him a phone.

Then Gary would have been in the chatroom too. They would have had his number. 

Then when he stopped reading their messages, they would have been concerned. 

Then when they called him and he didn’t pick up, not once, they would have known something was wrong. 

Or maybe, said the voice in his head that didn’t sound like Mum, but like himself: Gary would have been eighteen and an adult, and we woudn’t have looked for ages. We would have thought, he just stopped reading messages. He just stopped picking up calls. If Officer Jenny hadn’t done Mum a favour, how long would it have been before we looked for Dad?

On the monitors, the shadows lengthened. The light intensified, turning orange, then red; before stealing away as quietly as it had come with the dawn. The Rhydon was still in its kennel, dozing in the dark; but in the moment that Ash looked down to pour Pokéfeed into Pikachu’s bowl, it disappeared. There was only an empty kennel. 

A thought struck Ash, then. One that should have occurred to him much earlier. He could just imagine Gary laughing at him now. Could imagine Gary saying, don’t worry about it, Ashy-boy. It’s not your fault you’re stupid. 

Officer Jenny wasn’t going to give money to the ransomers. 

She couldn’t give in to a couple of criminals like that. 

So what was she going to give them? 

The door opened, letting Manon in, and he would have asked her, but she pointed at the screen. At Officer Jenny motoring into sight. As Manon sat down beside him, Ash watched Officer Jenny come to a stop before the fountain. Officer Jenny and a man, his face hidden by a helmet. Then, the man got down, took off his helmet, and Ash said, “The professor?”

“They wouldn’t accept anyone else.”

Her clipped tone told him not to ask any more questions. 

Officer Jenny and Professor Oak both seemed to be empty-handed. Ash was conscious of his dry throat. His beating heart. Pikachu leaning forward, claws digging into his shoulder, poised for a command. 

As three people emerged from the shadows. 

Pikachu started to growl. 

A man and a woman in Team Rocket getup, and Gary. 

Ash sat forward in his seat.

The woman was holding a device. Both Officer Jenny and Professor Oak put up their hands. “What are they – ”

“Pokéball scanner.”

Directing the scanner at the officer first, the woman nodded, satisfied. Then turned to the professor. She started at his feet and moved up, up, only to stop around the professor’s belt. 

The image was too small. Ash couldn’t make out their expressions. Couldn’t make out what was happening. 

The woman tucked the scanner back into her belt. Held out her hand. 

Officer Jenny shook her head, saying something. 

The woman shook her head, too. 

Why wasn’t there any audio feed?

After a moment, Officer Jenny nodded at Professor Oak. Who looked between her and the Rocket, then stepped forward, taking something from his pocket. 

The money. It had to be money. 

But Ash knew that it wasn’t, even if his brain hadn’t quite caught up to the rest of him. 

It was a Pokéball. 

“No!”

Pikachu leapt from his shoulder. Ash leapt to his feet. 

“Sit down,” barked Manon. “It’s not a Pokémon, it’s empty, so sit down.”

“How do you know? You said only – ”

But Manon’s gaze was fixed on the screen, on Professor Oak putting the thing on the floor, then stepping back to where Officer Jenny was. The Rocket woman walked forward and picked up the ball. Clicked it twice so that it expanded, then opened in her hand. Examined the insides. Then she clicked it shut again, and clicked it small. Only to repeat her actions. And repeat them. And repeat them. 

“Come on,” Manon was saying under her breath.

The woman nodded, and gestured at Gary. 

The professor’s eyes were on his grandson, who was being pushed towards him, step by step. 

But the Rocket man stopped Gary right behind his partner in crime. Still a metre’s distance away from Officer Jenny and Professor Oak. And Gary wasn’t looking at the professor, but at his own unchained hands. Which the Rocket woman put the Pokéball into. 

This time, it was Manon who jumped out of her chair. Her hands were planted on the counter. “No,” she said. “I told them, oh, no.”

In a way that Ash could only think was reluctant, Gary clicked the Pokéball open. But he didn’t just peer into it like the woman had done. It was hard to see what he was doing, but he was definitely doing – something. And then just as reluctantly, he looked up at the Rocket woman and said something. 

The Rocket woman swivelled round to Professor Oak and Officer Jenny. 

And everything happened at once. 

Manon pressed a button and shouted, “Go, go, go!”

The van jerked into motion, sending Ash stumbling and Pikachu yelping in. On the monitor, Pokémon had burst onto the grounds of the gym, followed by their Trainers shouting commands. Not ordinary Trainers – police officers in casual clothes. But even as a Flareon’s Flamethrower burst across the screen, and the van veered to the right, and Ash landed on his backside on the floor, there was another van careening onto the screen. Doors in its side were sliding open, and the Rocket woman was shouting at Officer Jenny and Professor Oak, and the Rocket man was pulling Gary inside the van, and Ash could hear it now. Outside the blanks walls, beyond the screens and their calm, silent display of the scene. He could hear the grunts and cries and shrieks and shouted commands that was battling, and Gary shouting, “Gramps. Gramps!”

“Follow them,” Manon was saying as she pressed another button. The monitors flickered, and now that they were all showing the same dark road, lit by white headlights and streetlamps that seemed to flee behind them like a flock of Pidgey mid-escape. 

Ash pulled himself up and back onto his chair. Another swerve almost sent him tumbling again. And another. And another. 

Turn after turn, then screeching round a fountain, then hurtling down an alley so dark that it had to end in a dead end, only for an opening to appear on the right at the last moment. 

The Rocket van was a pair of distant red lights, always almost pulling out of sight. 

And then they were out of sight. 

“Oh, no you don’t,” muttered Manon. “Come on, Lucas, step on it!”

“This is a residential area – ”

“And we are on a fucking car chase!”

Inside the van, Ash could see nothing but the video feed. But he could feel the engine thrumming under his feet, and he could feel the climbing speed like a breath that he was sucking in, and in, and holding, waiting. 

“There they are!”

The red lights came back into sight, hightailing it down an alley so narrow that, following them into it, Ash imagined he heard their side mirrors scraping at the walls. 

“We’re coming out onto the main road,” said Lucas. 

“Don’t let them make the turn!”

The van was closing in now. Closing, closing, but not quickly enough. Manon cursed. They weren’t going to make it. 

And then the Rocket van lurched to a halt. 

The lights, once so distant, loomed right into the monitor. Instinctively, Ash curled an arm around Pikachu and shut his eyes. 

Their van lurched to a halt too. Ash fell out of his seat. Manon was whooping. “Now there’s a woman who can drive. We’ve got those bastards cornered now.”

Picking himself up for the second time, Ash squinted up at the monitor. Past the Rocket van, he could make out another vehicle. Another police van?

A woman’s voice, crackling on speakerphone, pierced right through the walls. 

“This is Viridian Officer Jenny. Team Rocket, you are surrounded. Cooperate and come out now with Gary Oak, and we might plead leniency for you.”

Pikachu pushed its head through Ash’s arms. In the light from the screens, Manon’s face was a ghostly white. 

She was silent. 

There was only silence. 

The speakerphone crackled to life once more. “This is your last warning, Team Rocket. Come out now with Gary Oak, and – ”

A black, winged creature sprang out of the roof of the van, and sprayed a circle of fire. Officer Jenny cut off. Over the monitor, Lucas was screaming. 

Manon whirled and dashed for the doors. Pulling them open, she jumped out of the van, skidding on the ground. A Pokéball was in her hand. “Pidgeot!” The bird appeared before her, screeching and shaking out its wings. 

“Wait,” said Ash, jumping out as well. “I’m coming.”

Climbing onto her Pidgeot, she said, “I’m not waiting!”

The click of the Pokéball was as natural to him as breathing. “Dragonite!”

They leapt into the air. 

Dragonite’s strong flaps brought him up above the buildings and into the night sky. The city laid out beneath, main streets traced in fire and buildings all ablaze, while the winding alleys and old, uninhabited dumps hid in the gloom. 

“There,” said Manon. “Pidgeot, after them!”

“Come on, Dragonite!”

Dragonite was fast, but Pidgeot was faster, and it was all Ash could do to keep Manon in his sights, much less look for the shadow in a shadow that was their target. 

What was it? A new Pokémon. 

He didn’t know whether it was the adrenaline of the chase, or a new discovery, that sent his heart thudding against his ribcage. “Come on, buddy, you can go faster!”

The Pokémon was faster than Dragonite, but not faster than Pidgey, and as Manon pulled further away from Ash, she pulled closer and closer to the dark Pokémon, until they were silhouettes against the black line of Viridian Forest, one above the other. 

Manon’s figure was standing up, shouting something that Ash couldn’t quite make out. 

Pidgeot spread its wings wide, infusing them with a white light. And then with a screech, plummeted towards the Pokémon. Who swerved to the left, avoiding the attack. But its headlong rush had been interrupted. 

It would have to stand now, and fight. Its roar was full of rage. 

Closer now, Ash could hear Manon yell, “Wing Attack, again!”

Wing Attack, against a flying type? 

“Flamethrower,” screamed the Rocket woman. 

“Dodge, Pidgeot!”

A column of fire ripped through the dark, setting Pidgeot’s tail feathers smoking. Pidgeot whirled, and sped once again at the Pokémon in what could only be another Wing Attack. 

“Dodge, dodge!”

One of the three figures on the Pokémon’s back ducked, covering his head with his gloved hands. The figure in the middle only sat there, watching Pidgeot’s approach. 

And Ash understood. 

Manon didn’t want to knock the Pokémon out of the sky. Blacked out and falling, it might get its riders entangled in its limbs, and Manon and Ash wouldn’t be able to save them. They wouldn’t be able to save Gary. 

“Charizard!”

Mega Charizard X. Of course! But that meant – “Officer, look out!”

“Use Blast Burn!”

Blue flames wreathed the Charizard’s black body, bathing the sky in a light so blinding that Manon put her hand out, trying to shield her eyes. Her Pidgeot pulled up out of its advance, its own eyes squeezed shut, screeching. 

Just then, Gary kicked the Charizard hard in its flanks. 

The movement wasn’t enough to distract the Pokémon, but its head jerked, and when Charizard’s blue energy surged across the darkness towards Manon and her Pidgeot, it was off-target enough for Pidgeot to simply drop out of the way. 

Thwarted, Charizard let out a great bellow, its tail switching back and forth. Its owner tore at her hair. “You idiot,” she screamed at Gary. Then kicked her Charizard herself. “Fly, you hulking heap of stupid. Fly!”

But Ash was close enough now. Close enough that, when Gary turned around, their eyes met. 

What Gary was thinking, or feeling, or trying to say in that moment, Ash didn’t know. All their lives together, he had never been particularly good at telling. It was okay, though. He didn’t need to be able to tell. He already knew what he had to do. 

“Dragonite, use Hyper Beam!”

“No,” cried Manon. “Ash!”

“Blast Burn, you stupid hunk of meat. Blast Burn!”

Dragonite’s eyes glowed white. She opened her mouth, and white light poured out, curling into a ball. And Charizard flapped away before her, helpless for a crucial second before it turned, and booked it. 

Because, it wasn’t Charizard who was stupid. It was never the Pokémon who were stupid. It was the Trainer, who didn’t even know what a move like Blast Burn cost its user. 

The ball in front of Dragonite’s mouth turned into a beam, lancing across the night and right into Charizard’s back. 

In the moment before it struck, Gary wrenched free of the Rocket man’s constraining arms, and heaved himself over into thin air. 

The sky lit up like it was daytime. 

Charizard convulsed, screaming. On its back its riders were screaming too, from the pain maybe, and from fear, scrambling to stay seated. And then Charizard went still, breathtakingly still. Before it dropped in one long line from head to blue-tipped tail, straight through the forest canopy, and hit the ground with a distant, sickening thud. 

From the same forest canopy, Pidgeot soared up to a level with Dragonite and hovered there, its massive wings beating, its eyes still and unblinking. Gary lay across its back, facedown, kept in place by Manon’s arm around his waist. 

“Blacked out,” she said. “Probably from fright.” 

Ash looked down at his own trembling hands. “Will he – will he be okay?”

He could sense her eyes on him, as still and unblinking as her Pidgeot’s. 

“Didn’t you think what would happen, when you told Dragonite to use Hyper Beam? If he hadn’t jumped right then, he would be down on that forest floor right now, with those Rockets. I thought you would have more battlefield awarness than that, Ash! Officer Jenny was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you get involved.”

His voice was trembling, too. “I knew.”

“You – what?”

“Gary, he – I knew.”

“What about Gary?” Her voice was rising despite, he suspected, her best efforts. “Did you two agree something? I saw him looking at you. Did you two – whatever you agreed, I didn’t get the memo! What if I hadn’t caught him?

“He trusted that you would.”

She laughed, a sharp, mean sound of incredulity. “He trusted – ” And then she stopped. Shook her head. When she spoke again, her tone was as calm as she’d intended it. “I don’t know about this, Ash. I don’t know whether I should be shouting at you right now and reporting you to Officer Jenny for reckless behaviour, and obstruction of police work; or whether I should be cheering you for thinking up a brilliant plan to save your friend, and executing it. I don’t know, what were you thinking?”

He looked at the back of Gary’s head. The familiar mess of hair, which in the daylight, would be the exact same shade of brown as his sister’s. Daisy’s Clefable waited quietly in its Pokéball in Ash’s pocket, a small curve of metal pressing through linen, and into skin. 

He said, “I wasn’t going to give up.”

Officer Jenny, who didn’t have a Pokémon she could fly on, arrived on another officer’s much smaller and slower Pidgeotto. Having moved Gary from Pidgeot to Dragonite, Manon took them to apprehend the Rockets. Ash was instructed to take Gary to the hospital, and then contact Professor Oak and Daisy. 

Flying back over the lights of the city, Gary stirred. Ash didn’t know whether he was awake or not, and was happy to leave it that way. His nerves were sparking like the frayed ends of an electric cord. He didn’t know whether he could even speak. 

Pikachu, though, poked at Gary once or twice. Then then climbed back onto Ash’s shoulder and rubbed her cheek against the shell of Ash’s ear. 

They alighted outside Viridian Hospital. Two nurses rushed out with a stretcher. Waving away Ash’s attempt to help, they got Gary down and flat on his back on the stretcher. Dragonite returned to her ball without complaint, probably exhausted. 

One of the nurses wheeled Gary towards the brightly lit lobby, while the other half-walked, half-herded Ash in the same direction, asking him a barrage of questions that he wasn’t sure he answered correctly, or at all. At some point, the questions came to an end. There was a cup of water in his hand. The nurse was walking away. 

It was just Ash and Pikachu on a plastic seat near the reception desk. 

How quiet it was in here. How calm. Just people standing, or walking, or sitting on the seats or in wheelchair; their family, friends, and Pokémon around them. 

He called Professor Oak. Then Daisy. 

And listened to them break down, crying, asking him over and over again whether Gary was okay, even though Ash couldn’t say. Didn’t know. 

Daisy also asked him, “Was Clefable any help?”

Reaching into his pocket, Ash took out the Pokéball. In shape and size and appearance, it was had once been exactly the same as any standard-issue ball. But it was like Ash’s now. Scratched, chipped, well-loved. 

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, he was.”

Daisy sniffled, and he could tell she was crying all over again. “Thank you, Ash. Thank you.” She hung up almost immediately, promising to come as soon as she could. 

He let her, and sat there. On a plastic seat in the quiet, calm lobby of the hospital. Waiting. On the wall above the reception desk, there was a clock. Its hands ticked the seconds and the minutes, and in due time, the hour. Ticked them into Ash’s skull. 

At twelve to eight, Professor Oak rushed in. Crying and exclaiming; holding Ash’s hands tight between his own, and maybe thanking him, maybe asking him the same questions over and over again. Ash tried his best to pay attention. But it was hard, when the words were difficult somehow, difficult to parse. Like a leaf working round a jutting stone, trying to rejoin the current, but just stuck.

Stuck. 

He should have gone back to Manon and Officer Jenny. Battling and arresting people, or at least begging to be allowed to help, surely took up more time than sitting here, watching time eat itself. 

Finally, a nurse came. Asking whether they were relatives of Gary Oak. Telling Professor Oak things that Ash couldn’t make sense of above the cacophony in his head, and then turning. The professor followed her, and so Ash followed him.

They were in a ward. She was pushing back a pale green curtain. And Gary was sitting there, legs covered by a pale green blanket, the rest of him just as pale, and much greyer than green. In the moment that he first looked up at them, his face was empty. As empty as Ash had been. Numb. Except that Ash wasn’t like that anymore. Now, Ash was overfull, overflowing. 

The river came crashing down on the rock, dislodging the leaf. And it, now free, swept once again into the current. 

Time was countable no more. Time was running, sprinting, surging ahead of him. 

Daisy had looked into his face, and thought of what she wanted to say to her brother. 

Ash looked into her brother’s face, and said, “You’re home.” 

Gary grinned. It was the same stupid, smug, idiot grin that he’d cultivated since he was six years old. Since he’d stopped crying long enough to glory at how much trouble his little tantrum had caused for Ash, a boy he’d only just met. 

He said, “Yeah. I am.”


End file.
